Has the time come for you to get bored of Facebook or other social networking sites? 23-year-old engineering graduates Srikanth Bohra and Paras Kulhad are waiting for just the day when people will look for alternatives and take notice of their product, Iddhis. Iddhis is a ‘reverse social network’ — meant for private, one-on-one conversations between two people.

Iddhis is aimed at cutting out the clutter created by too many social networking sites and making communication more qualitative and personal. Right now, due to the lack of such service, people unwillingly post ‘very private’ updates on Facebook or Twitter.

“We are trying to solve this. We believe that every relationship needs to have an identity, Iddhis is for that. No friend’s requests, no groups. Iddhis is a Buddhist word which means supernatural powers which one cannot use for oneself but for others. We hope to make Iddhis a powerful connecting place for relationships,” the founders say.

Bohra and Kulhad, from Engineering College, Bikaner, moved to Bangalore in August to create the website. “We wanted to have something that is private by default,” says Srikanth Bohra who is also a Google Summer of Code scholar and invested the scholarship of $5,000 in the firm. Users find comfort in the private network. “I am on Iddhis with my girlfriend because I wanted to be on a private network. I was kind of bored of Facebook,” Anirudh Sharma, 23, a researcher with HP Labs.

“With 500 friends on my list and I did not want to know what they had for breakfast. I found out about Iddhis on Twitter and I joined it the day it launched,” he added.

One cannot have individual accounts on the site. It offers only joint accounts and the options of sharing photographs, daily schedules, maintaining time lines, and even posting complaints.

The site has 900 users so far and adding about a dozen users every day. “Interestingly enough, we having users even from the US Army. They like the privacy it provides,” said Bohra. The revenue model eventually will be to offer specific deals to users through travel and tour companies and also have third-party integrations by collaborating with gifting companies.
Srividya Iyer