Bengaluru youth’s mobile platform helps compare, study human behaviour

BENGALURU: What’s the first thing you would do before meeting a person with whom you have little acquaintance? Chances are high that you would do a quick search on Google, Facebook or LinkedIn to gather basic information. To help those looking for more in-depth details, a

London School of Economics

(LSE) graduate based in Bengaluru has come up with a behaviour-based rating, comparison and people-discovery platform.

The brain behind Leadburg, a mobile-based platform, is

Sangeeth Varghese

.

“Google or Facebook provide only hard information such as work experience and education qualification. They hardly enlighten you on people’s behaviour or social competencies. We have put our decade-long experience in behaviour studies and analytics to develop a mobile-based platform that would enable people to play fun games and quizzes to reveal interesting personal traits, rate their buddies, compare themselves to their peers and discover interesting people based on their behaviour,” said Sangeeth, founder chairman of Leadcap Ventures.

The team partnered with 150 colleges across India, including some IIMs and IITs. “In the next phase, we’ll focus on smaller colleges and even look at markets outside India,” he added.

The team is non-judgemental when it comes to traits or skills. “We don't rate an extrovert over an introvert or a high-risk taker over a risk averse. Each trait has its own strengths --- while an extrovert might be preferred for sales jobs, introverts might be better suited for analytical jobs. We have built Leadburg as a mere observer and compiler of human behaviour, enabling people to take easier decisions, discover better possibilities, whether it’s professional or personal,” said Sangeeth, the Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.

His partners are

Akshay Chandrasekhar

, who previously worked with Intel and owns four patents in cloud and networking, and Vidyadhar Prabhudesai,

Ford Foundation

Fellow and a Global Shaper.

It’s a challenge to get people share their behavioural data.

“One of the things that we gathered fairly early in our journey is the fact that none of us like being tested. We hate being given out a long questionnaire asking us to analyze ourselves. If it feels like a test, people switch off automatically. If something is as fun as a game, or probably as intuitive as the Facebook newsfeed, then people are more open and relaxed to give responses. Most important learning was that behaviour has a social context and hence, we cannot rely just on self-analysis,” Sangeeth said.

The team decided to have a mobile-only strategy because a majority of the digital generation is mobile-friendly. “ The idea is to address the need to take informed decisions before meeting someone. Whether it’s for a job or for business or matrimonial, we don’t have statistically valid real-time behavioural and compatibility information. Leadburg provides you that valuable bit of information that LinkedIn or Google are unable to,” he added.