Navinn Kapur: Digital business cards are the new game changer

Digitizing the traditional paper business card opens up a whole new world of possibilities and utility. The corporate sector is growing digital, from banking to business meetings. As a result, it's no surprise that business cards, a must-have for any successful networker, are undergoing a virtual transformation. Digital business cards bridge the gap and make the corporate interaction between two individuals easy and flawless.  To keep your network structured and sorted in the digital era, you'll need an efficient contact management tool. At the touch of a button, CardByte allows you to save, exchange, and scan cards digitally within seconds.

Through this interview the co-founder, Navinn Kapur talks how digital business cards allow quick sending, receiving, and exchanging of contact information.

1. Give a brief info about CardByte?

80% of our life is digital but we still exchange business cards and store contacts like we are stuck in the 90s. As per a survey 7.2 million trees are cut down every year for creating paper business cards, 90% of which are thrown away within the first week itself. CardByte aims at addressing these issues of the industry while also contributing towards reducing the carbon footprint.

 CardByte is India’s 1^st end-to-end contact management & networking app that helps you store contacts & network seamlessly. You create e-cards, store paper cards and access contacts all at a tap on the screen within seconds. Forget running after printers or searching for cards in your wardrobe when you need them most. NO paper, NO plastic, it's a lean and green solution. While that vision is the core of our product, CardByte has now transformed into a mission to power how the world networks and grows its business.

2. What made you start the platform and what problem does it solve?

I have founded and run three companies and in my 30 years of experience, managing professional contacts & leads has been one of the most prevalent problems. Almost everyone in the professional world faces this question: “How do we store, maintain and manage one’s contacts efficiently?”

My entrepreneurial journey also gave me an understanding the cost an organization bears when it has no process, system or automation to manage such vast data. There is a loss in your network but there is also a loss in the legacy. An organisation builds these contacts over a period of time. On an average, each year an organization spends INR 5000 per employee for printing business cards.

Additionally, I realised it was time contact exchange went digital. No matter who you are, a business trying to grow its sales or an individual trying to network effectively, exchange of business cards is a given. But from forgetting to carry it to the problem of storing a paper card in your smartphone, the entire process is offline & highly unorganized. While majority of cards are thrown away within the first week of exchange, others get outdated with time as the contacts update their designations, organisations, and even industries. How can businesses & professionals keep a track of all the important changes in their network and share them effectively within groups & organizations? The answer it CardByte. It not only solves all your contact management problems but even ticks the boxes of being eco-friendly, digital, and secure.

3. Could you please explain the technology behind CardByte?

Since CardByte is both an app and a platform, we decided to build it on scalable, secured and cloud-native microservices architecture. We have leveraged a proven and latest technology stack, which is then powered by an intelligent search engine and boosted by an artificial intelligence-based deep learning scanner to make it robust and reliable for every user.  

4. Please share insights on the important features of CardByte?

CardByte is a powerful tool that will help you create one or more business cards for every type of introduction. And every time you want to share your ‘digi-card’ you can do it in a host of ways irrespective of you being online. You can share as one CardByte user to another just by searching for each other’s names. Alternatively, you can use any of the third-party apps like Whatsapp & Gmail for exchanging cards or even share it as a QR or Bluetooth ecard when not connected to the internet. The user gets an auto organizer and a powerful search to access their contacts anytime, anywhere. In case of vast data, the “tag” feature helps segment the contacts and group them neatly for easy & painless access whenever required.

On top of that, as I said before, we help the user scan paper cards, digitize their details and improve their shelf life.

Since contacts make nodes to a wider professional network, we envisioned CardByte as a social platform. We help you discover, build and sustain connections with every share since we ensure all your contacts can be found on CardByte and through updated information.

5. How CardByte is contributing to digital India?

Inspired by Atmanirbar Bharat and Local for Vocal initiative, CardByte is all set to evolve into a business networking platform, transforming business-card-based introductions into connections into business opportunities. At the heart of our effort is the vision that CardByte becomes a leading homegrown networking platform. It is time we seize the potential our billion-plus population holds and reduce our dependability on problematic foreign social platforms. 

CardByte can help India’s professionals, traders, retailers, small businesses, and large enterprises in digitizing their contacts, managing their customer data and relationships, thereby ushering them into the digital age. Plus, the advantage of being an Indian product lies in our knowing and adapting to the needs of the Indian consumer needs.

6. How do you stand out from your competitors?

Domestically, we have not identified a competitor who has a similar product offering and comprehensive features like ours. Yet if we have to compare with fragmented offerings available in the market, the CardByte Directory is the only platform to offer a cloud space to store, manage and organize your contacts effectively and efficiently. The ‘CardByte Scan,’ enables scan and storage of cards both online and offline. Unparalleled privacy and power is what we grant to each user of the ‘CardByte Network’, which means no on can share their contact info unless the user allows them to. The network is an easy and convenient nexus to build your connections without spending extra efforts other than sharing your card which is constantly getting modified by the ‘CardByte Stay Updated’ feature. The last of which, again, is unique to us.

7. How the platform is helping in business networking and in what way it will revolutionize businesses?

A timely access to a contact’s up-to-date information is critical for any transaction. It is fact that businesses approximately lose 80% of their potential opportunities due to the unavailability of a centralized contact database and/or stale contact information. CardByte instead helps you beat the odds and increase one’s chances to close a business transaction by 50% thanks to a timely, organized and updated contacts database.

Further, CardByte offers actionable and effortless networking through introductions and sharing of business cards, thus creating connections. There is zero clutter or loss as we completely abort multiple systems, notebooks, and cardholders. On top of it, we are green. These ideas are the seeds of an oncoming revolution for the many lives and businesses in India that are still sticking to the old ways of exchanging information through business cards.

8. Please share some insights on how the platform is contributing to green India.

Each year more than 7.2 million trees are cut across the world to print paper business cards, out of which 90% are thrown away within a week of exchange. Therefore, CardByte not only saves trees by offering a digital alternative but believes that “Big changes start small.” Whether you’re just starting your business or trying to create a positive change in your community, we want to empower all. In my 28+ years of experience, I have learned that small contributions of individuals can add up to create a huge impact. CardByte’s app helps users bring down their individual carbon footprint. Moreover, CardByte plants a tree each time a subscription is purchased, working towards a greener planet.

9. Anything else you would like to highlight.
 

We live in a fast-paced world. “On average, every 30 minutes 120 business addresses change, 75 phone numbers change, 20 CEOs leave their jobs and 30 new businesses are formed (Source: Dun & Bradstreet; The Sales and Marketing Institute). Whether you are an independent business professional, an entrepreneur, or a corporate executive, you must keep pace with the fast-changing world of your contacts and CardByte does precisely that. I believe that it will add an unparalleled value to the users’ professional lives and soon become the ONLY digital wallet they’ll ever need to carry for business cards & networking.

(Sponsored Feature)