SMS — a smile breaks on our lips when we get one from a loved one. We break into fits of laughter when we get a joke. But what happens when it’s a spam sms, which has got nothing to do with what we do or who we are — ughh! And what’s worse is when we get totally bombarded by marketing junk.
Meet 27-year-old Sagar Bedmutha, CEO of Optinno Mobitech Pvt. Ltd. and an entrepreneur from Pune, who developed an award-winning Symbian mobile phone-based application ‘smsBlocker’, a smart application that runs on your mobile and guarantees spam blockage.
The young man makes no bones of his humble beginnings and his new space of that of a corporate honcho. “I am from a typical middle-class family. Although I had taken up Mechanical Engineering, I wanted to do something else, but couldn’t figure out what. After graduation, I took up a job at Citibank. I lacked an educational background to deal with financial and banking companies. I was slightly scared because all I wanted was to be an entrepreneur and here I was doing a job that is most people’s dream. So, I quit in December 2006. The two years in the banking industry gave me the confidence and insight into starting up my own enterprise.”
Speaking of his innovation, he says, “The sheer applicability of science in everyday life is the real inspiration behind my success. Right from my schooldays, I kept myself immersed in various science experiments. The thrill I got from doing something new was immense and mistakes never de-motivated me. Once I opened up a bulb, replaced the thin copper filament with a thicker one under the misconception that if a thin filament emitted so much light, then a thicker one would emit more, only to end up exploding the bulb.”
Tasting success at the tender age of 19 might not have been easy to contend with. “Back in second year of college, I created a jack to lift heavy objects with a single stroke with the help of spring and lever. I found out that my invention could actually be patented, but when I approached a patent lawyer, I learnt it would cost me `50,000 as fees and I did not have that kind of money. But I was determined to get one, so I familiarised myself with the process and with help from officials at the Patent Office in Mumbai, at nineteen and a half years of age, I applied for my patent. It took me four years to finally have a patent in my name. The jack has won various awards for me, including a National Award from the Indian Society for Technical Education.”
On his NASA and Nokia award-winning innovation smsBlocker, he says, “I noticed how telemarketing started catching up and spam sms were bothering phone users. I did not have the technical resources to build the application on my own, but I had the concept detailed clearly in my mind. With the help of various consultancy agencies and extensive hours of R&D owing to the complexity of the application, smsBlocker came into existence. I personally have gone through 3000 plus spam sms to make sure the application is near fool-proof.”