Connexun Introduction
By: Payal Aggarwal
Connexun is an innovative startup based in Italy Aims to address the inefficiencies & lack of focus towards services to unserved and underserved target communities. It is a Geolocation Mobile App that provides news, information and content based on user’s Origin country and Geolocation.
Connexun with its artificial intelligent B.I.R.B.AL. engine generates autonomous information feed without human intervention to its target displaced community. Displaced community (Diaspora, migrants, expats, International travellers) are people (and their near and dear ones) who have had to leave their country of origin for socioeconomic factors.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.connexun.main&hl=en_US
The idea of Connexun is simple, making users feel closer to their origin without losing the present from focus. User would be updated not just about his country of origin but also with the important news and information from the present geo-location.
When did it start?
Connexun started in 2012, in collaboration with Bicocca University, Consulate of India in Milan, IBM and Deloitte. In 2012, the first concept was ideated and B.I.R.B.AL (Brillant Information Research Bigdata ALgorithm) was born. B.I.R.B.AL is Connexun’s own AI engine which analyses and orders content from the World Wide Web, and provides this to the right user at right time. This partnership went on for 3 years, during which various features of the product built not just conceptually but also technically with the help of students and the technical staff. Connexun had also partnered with Embassy of Italy in India, TIM, and EXPO2015 during the Milan Design Week 2015 for the launch of the first version of the connexun app. Since then we have been working trained our AI, in respect of content sources that are crawled and classified, news summarization and scaling it for more country combinations. During this time, connexun was also recognised as an innovative start-up by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and was able to gain back up as the Italian State’s guarantee fund.
Read here how to guarantee fund works for Italian start-ups. (https://www.economyup.it/startup/connexun-la-nostra-odissea-con-le-banche-nonostante-il-fondo/)
What is the product?
Connexun is a mobile application only product. Our flagship app works as news and information aggregator for the displaced population of the world. The main user inputs for the app are, user’s origin country and his geolocation, based on these inputs user can view news feed curated for him specifically. For a typical diaspora, this feed will contain news items from and about the country of origin and his location and information cards pertaining to him specifically (e.g British citizen in EU will get a card about https://www.gov.uk/guidance/living-in-italy)
The app also features various external services right now available only for the users within Italy like #NotifyMe and #8xmille.
