Vikram Nalagampalli is the Founder and CEO, Voterite Software Private Limited. Vikram Nalagampalli is an entrepreneur and a returning NRI with over 15 years of leadership experience in enabling change, leveraging technology in Corporate America.  Genesis of Voterite began with Vikram’s recent journey back to his home country and had to go through a hard realization of various facts that every citizen is rightfully entitled for.  Vikram very quickly decided to leverage his expertise in enabling change using technology. Hence began the first phase of Voterite journey, which is all about electing the right leaders and providing a platform for constituents and leaders to engage.

Prior to starting his own venture, Vikram has been associated with organizations like IBM, Stryker, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cinergy Technology in various roles.

In an exclusive interaction with India Digital Review, Vikram talks about the challenges he faced in creating Voterite and why he chose social media to bring about change.

Firstly tell us what gave you the idea to come up with Voterite?

Voterite is all about bringing accountability and transparency in democracy and enabling a platform for citizens to not only voice their opinion but also collectively solve their problems in their neighborhood. 

We broke the journey of Voterite into 2 phases:

Phase 1 (Launch): Better India needs better leaders and Voterite’s vision is to fix the problem at the grass root level which can only happen by empowering citizens. Hence, we start with the first phase of our journey to provide a platform where citizens can influence elections through peer-peer campaigning. 2014 is just the beginning of a very important milestone in political landscape. For the first time in India educated youth can alter the result in over 170 MP constituencies.  Voterite is an attempt to talk the language of the youth leveraging social media and influence them to actively participate in re-defining the way leaders are elected.

Phase 2 (Mid 2014 Launch): Bringing Accountability in Democracy- Even the great leaders need feedback to measure themselves. Voterite is a citizen’s platform that enables two way engagement between constituents and elected candidates. Voterite aims at providing a means for citizens to join hands and resolve their problems in the most efficient manner.

Why did you choose social media to bring about the change?

Social media is India is growing at an exponential rate and is predicted that India will be the world’s largest user of social media by 2018. Political landscape is also changing in India for good with India going to be the youngest nation in the world by 2018. Voterite is a platform for citizen engagement that can talk the language of the youth and is targeted to become India’s largest citizen engagement portal that connects citizens with elected bodies and induce accountability in the most democratic way.

What were some of the challenges you faced before the site went live?

Starting the site was not easy and we were faced with many hurdles, the following being a few of them:

• • Connecting the gaps across the four social networking sites.
• • Connecting and compiling information pertaining to 48,000 candidates and 4,663 constituencies.
• • Connecting the offices of all the elected bodies and nominated bureaucrats across India (work in progress).

How has been the site faring so far with both the voters and the leaders?

We saw a huge momentum in the Delhi election and since the Delhi election; we have been steadily growing with increasing participation from both leaders and voters.

Is Voterite on mobile as well? Which of the platforms is driving more traffic to the site- internet or mobile?

Voterite mobile will be launched this month. During the Delhi assembly elections about 28 per cent of the users were accessing the site via mobile devices.

What is the revenue model of Voterite?

Currently, Voterite’s revenue is coming via social analytics and sentiment analysis at the constituency.

Do you fear that the site’s traffic may take a hit once the election fever subsides?

We expect the site traffic to go significantly up after the election as we launch the phase 2 of our journey.

Share with us your vision for Voterite two years down the line.

Voterite will be positioned as India’s largest citizen engagement portal that is set to bring in a difference with regard to accountability and traceability in democracy.