UDO–Mobile app connects people with experts

Teja Gudluru is a Management Consultant, Corporate Trainer, Behavioral Coach and a serial Entrepreneur. He is currently the Founder and C.E.O of Mobitattva Creative Technologies private limited which is currently incubating his Mobile app start-up UDo-now.com

Having travelled across 35 plus countries during his 19 years’ tenure and expertise in the leadership and training arena, Teja’s niche training competencies include various Behavioral, , Leadership and Management development workshops using a multitude of Learning Technologies and has to date trained over 35,000 individuals across the spectrum of industries and hierarchies in over 35 countries.

His elite clientele include prestigious organizations like Microsoft, HCL, Aon Hewitt, LG Soft, Bloomberg, The World Economic Forum, Amazon, Google, GE, United Health Group, Value Labs, Monster.com, Mahindra Satyam, HSBC, Amazon, Unysis, Caere India, Allegis Group, Value Labs, United Health Group, GE and Google to name a few. Prior to founding CommSure Knowledge Solutions and Mobitattva Creative Tech Pvt. Ltd, Teja has worked in Senior Manager roles in organizations such as HSBC.

Q1. Tell us about your business, including some numbers such as reach/sales/revenue, etc.

UDO is mobile based platform that lets users connect to thousands of experts through video or audio calls in over a hundred categories. This innovative company offers mobile app which helps people get connected to experts and seek expert advice related to any problems he or she is going through.

UDO was conceived with a sole motive: to help Indian audiences in every step they take in life with an expert advice. That is, from travel and relationship advice to handling a difficult boss, career guidance, demand express advice in life's difficult situations or sometimes, simply someone to give you fashion advice. In a nutshell, UDo is a complete package in itself. UDo wants’ its users to stop texting and start talking to experts. Thus, with expert advice on finger tips and the ability to connect to an actual verified person instantaneously, Udo has the potential to become the market leader in Search and assisted services.

The other side of the app is the ability and the ease with which people can register as experts and start making passive income! No matter what the expertise, people can become experts, decide how much they want to charge for their time on the app and get featured in searches by the users. This is the future of passive income and earn from home apps in India!

Major Market differentiators:

1) For the first time, users can search for experts, review experts profile and connect with experts instantly through video or audio call. If the expert of their choice is offline, they can schedule a call as well.

2) There are no apps in the market that help people monetise their events and be able to broadcast them live. Apps like Zoom etc only work on a subscription basis. Which means you pay them and they give you the technical ability to conduct webinars and video conference. They then have to manage payments offline and then send video conference links. On UDo, they can simply sign up, decide their charges and users will find them.

3) Live Paid Broadcasting: UDo’s events feature lets any one registered as expert on the app to create live sessions/events/classes on the app and monetize it. They simply decide a ticket price to the event and users pay the amount in order to join. There by enabling people to share their knowledge and get paid for it seamlessly without the hassle of offline activities with the users. From a student who can teach guitar and make pocket money, to a house wive teaching cooking, to psychologists, coaches, IT professionals for trouble shooting, relationship advice, career counselling, relationship counselling, UDo is a perfect market place for experts to share knowledge and users to get instant personal advice from real experts on Audio or Video.

4) Thus far we have 20k plus downloads in 3 weeks and over 300 experts signed up in over 13 verticals. We are at a pre-revenue stage for our B2C vertical and have 5 global B2B clients who are using our platform as a white-labelled peer to Peer mentoring app.

Q2. When did you start the business and what was the reason/inspiration, or what problem did you identify and are trying to solve?

All this started when I tried to find out on google if I can travel to Ireland with a UK travel visa. There were 10,000 search results but mostly promoted posts and tips of travel. Quora dint work as well since I had to wait for someone to answer my query eventually and the recorded responses dint help me. This is when we decided that there should be platform to get instant help through Audio or Video from experts.

Q3. What are your growth plans for the next 1 and 5 years?

We plan to go Global with the app in Q4 2020 starting with ASEAN and UK and the rest of the world in 2021. We intent to hit the 1 Million download mark by July 2021. We are currently bootstrapped and would be initiating talks with investors later in 2020 to make this growth possible.

Q4. How has COVID-19 affected your business and how do you see this pan out?

With 90% of India being lock-down, our app has been seeing a steady increase in the downloads and usage. Though its been a few days of launching an updated version of the app, we have seen more than 20k downloads and over 300 experts signing up willing to make money by working from home. A lot of coaches and Free Lance trainers are using the app to video consult with their users and seamlessly make money.

This is the best opportunity for UDO to penetrate the market and become a go-to app for earning passive income and as India’s favourite work from home app!

Disclaimer: The views, suggestions and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Forbes India journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.