Product Idea and Concept

The idea for Oystro occurred to me in the second half of 2012. With no background in coding, I set about trying to connect with developers on linkedin and freelancer. Cannot recollect if fiverr existed during those days. Instead of Oystro, I had this app name “Buglez” in my mind. I imagined the medieval ages where an announcer with a bugle would go to the town square to announce a decree or an event organised by the ruler. Since neither “bugle” or bugles” was available as a domain name, I tweaked the spelling to put a “z” instead of a “s” at the end of the app name.

The main idea of the app was to enable meaningful interactions which in essence means more face to face or even online interactions such as chats, voice and video calls.

In business, people use Ms Outlook to send meeting requests on email to fix an appointment or a conference call. It is only meant for official purposes and has no role to play in the personal space.

During the early telecom days, SMS was the only way to send messages but messaging apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat and their ilk transformed this interaction to billions of messages per day exchanged in text, voice and video by using the data bandwidth. This made communication simple, easy, convenient and almost free due to decreasing data costs. We have reached a stage where personal as well as official messages are being shared on Whatsapp.

When it comes to organising a meeting we still use email based services to send a meeting request and fix an appointment. There is no app that has successfully transcended to cater to both the personal and business sphere to become a default app for such a purpose.

When it comes to fixing a meeting on WhatsApp, especially groups, there would be numerous unrelated messages that create confusion on the details of the event and make it tough for future reference. Similarly, email has its limitations in the personal space.

With the ubiquitous mobile, it would be easy and convenient to send meeting requests to fix an appointment on the go with friends, family and business contacts since it is common to have mobile numbers of people that matter to us on our phone.

It will be quick and convenient to accept and decline meetings. RSVP, therefore is easy to indicate and you get the status of who’s in and who’s not. Since the meeting gets stored in the mobile calendar, reminders are possible and it is easy to save the date.

So be it a client meeting, an official team catchup, a romantic date, play with friends at the club or outdoors, play date for your kids, an appointment at your local spa or hair saloon, reunions, private tutorials with your teacher, everything will be quick and convenient in Oystro.

You may wonder when the app idea germinated in 2012, why it took so many years to build a MVP. That’s another story to be told.