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No hearsay, no word of mouth, no self-proclamation. Now, the popularity of a political leader can be known on a real-time basis through an app called ‘Neta’.
Pratham Mittal, creator of the app, describes it as a rate card for politicians, where their popularity and victory is based on their ranking, which is determined by citizens. To be officially launched on Friday, the application was piloted in Karnataka in January, prior to the assembly elections. The app had a user base of 25 lakh and predicted the winners with 90 per cent accuracy.
The company is building a database of Indian constituencies and the politicians representing them.
Though it looks simple for end users, Mittal said that a lot of hard work goes into the back-end verification of the voters. Once a user registers, checks are made to ensure a voter’s eligibility using a One Time Password (OTP).
In order to weed out fake voters, the company uses Aadhaar, the Truecaller app and voters’ list to verify a users’ constituency.Talking about the need for such a rating system, Mittal said: “Though elections are meant to hold politicians accountable, they happen only once in five years. But in the app, rating is done on a daily basis.”
“In addition to accountability, it will also help users make informed decisions before voting, unlike now,” he added. The application is available in 16 languages. “We are targeting Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, which are up for elections. We already have 35 lakh users in each state,” he said.
Pan-India launch
“Chhattisgarh will be next. Then we are planning for a pan-India launch for the 2019 elections,” Mittal added.
“The company is also sensitising politicians about the app, and the launch on Friday by former president Pranab Mukherjee is a step in that direction,” Mittal said.
Candidates have begun to register in the app to keep tabs on their popularity.
Currently bootstrapped, Mittal said that monetisation is not on the cards right now. “We have the resources and are not looking for monetisation for the next couple of years,” he added. But he agrees that the company do has a few options for monetisation based on the data it they currently have.
Prior to Neta, Mittal started ‘Outgrow’ in the US, enabling that enables polling on websites.
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