How tech startups help politicians reach voters

Written By Unknown on Jumat, 22 November 2013 | 21.43

BANGALORE: As India prepares to elect a new Parliament, there is rising demand for technology tools that provide information to voters and help politicians reach out to a growing swathe of middle-class voters.

Nearly half-a-dozen technology startups that build such solutions are working on campaigns for political parties or developing platforms that help voters choose the right candidate. Two such ventures were launched in the last fortnight alone.

"A large mass of voters, especially upwardly mobile young urbanites do not attend political rallies, many do not even vote," said Vikram Nalagampalli, founder of Voterite. in, an online platform that collates the track record of political candidates in all 543 parliamentary constituencies.

The portal will display their assets, education and criminal history, if any, using data collected from the Election Commission. "Voterite's aim is to engage with people as they daily browse Facebook or Twitter," said Nalagampalli, who plans to charge candidates if they want to communicate messages to voters online. The 34-year-old engineer, who returned to India this year after a decade-long stint in the US, has already found his first customer.

"We plan to have all our candidates on Voterite in a few weeks,' said Ankit Lal, social media manager for the Aam Aadmi Party. Aware of the need to woo an increasingly vocal middle-class, India's oldest political parties too are turning to technology.

"Social media is one of the top five game changers we will see in this election," said Arvind Gupta, national head of the information technology cell of BJP. "We work with a lot of startups and have developed our patented technologies as well," said Gupta.

"There is anecdotal evidence from the last assembly elections in (Karnataka) that social media success can make a difference to voting percentages," said Rajeev Gowda, professor at IIM-B and an official spokesperson for Congress.

"It definitely has potential to influence young voters," he said. Bangalore-based Social Hues. com launched this month aims to do exactly that by curating content and proactively engage a Twitter audience for any candidate. It will also offer a dashboard to easily track online influence on Twitter.

"Online is a great medium to build a personal branding and Twitter is a very good opportunity for political candidates to reach their audience," said VK Balakrishnan, a former Infosys engineer, who quit to set up his own venture.

Regional parties such as the Rashtriya Lok Dal and the Biju Janata Dal too are turning to technology companies for solutions, according to the entrepreneurs.


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