What is the big problem we are trying to solve?

• The Language Problem

  
  The Disconnected Billions - Over 3 billion people worldwide are unable to experience text communication on mobile devices in their preferred language. Thus, mobile phones are voice only devices for such users.

• India is a typical case in point:

• India with a population of 1.2B has literacy rate of 76%. Less than 10% of population is English literate. That leaves 66%+ population which is literate, but does not know English. With a mobile subscriber base of 890m, there are 500m+ literate mobile users, which are starved of local language content on their handsets. Today the mobile in their hands is just a "voice only" device for them. There is a lack of good quality fonts, accurate text rendering capability, easy typing keypads and typing aids like predictive typing & transliteration on mobile phones & other digital devices today. There is a fragmented market where few mobile handsets have some Indian language fonts available, but that too of very poor quality. There is no consistent and standard way in which Application Developers and Content providers can deliver useful contents to the consumers in local languages, irrespective of the make of mobile handset available with them.

• The problem faced by Indian language consumers is same for several emerging geographies like South Asia, Middle East, Africa & non-Latin European countries. No SMS, search, social networking or useful text information, VAS services are possible for these consumers. Current solutions have poor quality, low usability and hence poor adoption.

  Team

• 

     Arvind Pani

  ( Co-Founder  &  CEO )

• Arvind had seen this gap, which he terms "Digital Language Divide" way back in 2000 and had been looking for an opportunity to address it. However, the mobile phones during those times were considered luxury and language was not a major hindrance. That changed significantly in the last part of the decade and Arvind along with his 2 other co-founders believed it was the right time to start Reverie. He also believed that the challenge of languages could not be solved by addressing any one section of the problem. Thus Arvind envisaged the 3 segments of language usage - text consumption, interaction, and automated processing as the building blocks of Reverie's language platform. Prior to starting Reverie, Arvind worked for Intel, L&T and SAIL in various capacities. Arvind has done his graduation in engineering from National Institute of Technology, Rourkela.

•    

    S.K  Mohanty

  ( Co-Founder  &  Chief Type Design Architect )
  

• Mohanty leads the fonts and aesthetics design and is the person behind the world-class fonts and type designs that deliver among the best user experience in the world. Mohanty has rich experience in the standardization of glyph for font design of Indian scripts. Prior to Reverie, Mohanty led the scripts standardization activities at CDAC and was the creator of ISFOC Standards for multilingual text display and printing in 8-bits, and ISCLAP Standard for multilingual Pagers for Indian Scripts. His contribution include Typeface designs in the complex Indian and south Asian scripts, which include Devanagari (Hindi & Marathi), Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati, Punjabi, Oriya, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhalese, Tibetan, Bhutanese. Mohanty has over 26 years of experience in digital font design, multi-lingual technology products, graphic design, visual communication and calligraphy. A recipient of FIE Foundation national awards in 1993, he has done his graduation in Applied Art from Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art Mumbai, and post-graduation in Visual Communication (M. Des) from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.

•    

     Vivekananda  Pani

   ( Co-Founder  &  Chief Technology Officer)
  

• Vivekananda drives technology development and Innovation at Reverie. He has been working in the area of language computing specific to complex languages for over 15 years. His journey into language computing started at CDAC where he led the language computing team and pioneered several tools including the first free text transliteration from English to Indian languages for regular text and Names. He was involved in developing the first Indian language solutions for Television Set-Top Boxes in 2001 and also introduced the first Indian language support solutions for mobile phones with text prediction and accurate rendering. He brings the value of architecting high performance solutions that scale across all range of devices. Vivekananda has done his B.Tech in Electronics and Instrumentation from CET, Bhubaneswar.

•    

    paritosh  Segal

    (  Board   Advisor )
  

• Paritosh brings unique insights and value to help organizations scale up rapidly. He has deep and varied experience in global & domestic IT Industry, having a career spanning 30+ years with Accenture, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Patni, including two start-ups. He has successfully led senior positions in Technology, Marketing, Sales, Business Partner Management, Product & Offerings Management, Service Delivery, Innovation and Research. He has established Centers in Mexico & China. He has worked across domains like Manufacturing, Distribution, Financial Services and Telecom. During his career he has undertaken several initiatives where he has built things from scratch, which have been a first in the Industry or for his organization. His last role at Patni was Senior VP & Global Head of GE Business Unit (Team of 2100+ / Revenues $75m+) and Global Head of Innovation & Research Labs consisting a team of 120+ engaged in Innovations in Service Delivery, Technology, New Service Offerings & Asset/IP creation. Paritosh has done BTech in EE from IIT/ Kanpur and MBA from AIMA, Delhi.