Kartik Mandaville on AutoBudder and what it takes to be a Student Entrepreneur

We at YourStory spoke to many Facebook users and   asked them about the new app – Autobudder (automatically wishes Friends on birthdays), what do they think about it and who do they think created it? Many replied it is a cool application, especially the one’s in the age group of 19-21 and many believed that Autobudder is an application built by developers out of India.Interesting. Not only does Autobudder herald the new face of student entrepreneurship but also present a change we are all witnessing in India. We have cutting edge young developers, programmers who are refusing to take high paying MNC jobs and working at building own products and innovations. Kartik Mandaville and his friendsSaurabh Suman, Abhinit Ambastha are the face of this change and the student entrepreneurs behind AutoBudder.

Kartik, tell us about Autobudder?

AutoBudder automatically wishes your friends on their birthdays, with customized messages from you, at sharp 12, before anyone can. Its hassle free, doubles as a birthday calendar, and at times, just helps maintain those social commitments.

A normal Facebook user may forget to wish his friends on their birthdays keeping in mind that he does not login daily. By using AutoBudder, you can relax and your friends will be automatically wished. With the latest version of AutoBudder, you can customize messages, selectively ignore people. So you just need to spend 10 minutes and AutoBudder will take care of the rest.

How many users have you reached out to?

As of 26th Jan Dec, 2011 we reach out to more than 6.6 lakh people and have 2550 registered users. We have a fan following of more than 1500 people and a rating of 4.9 out of 5 in Facebook.

What more can we expect?

We collaborate with Craft My Gift, a online gifting company. AutoBudder users can prebook gifts which will be deilvered automatically on their friend's birthday. We get a share of their profits earned through AutoBudder.

A quick take on the technology involved behind Autobudder?

AutoBudder uses the Facebook PHP SDK. HTML, Javascript, CSS, MySQL and PHP are used in its development. We use the latest Facebook Graph API and FQL . We use extended permissions for birthdays, email and offline access. Offline access enables us to post without the neccesity of the user being logged in to Facebook at that time. Once a user authorizes AutoBudder, we add a entry in our User table and query the birthdays of his friends to store into our Birthdays table. To reduce redundancy we use a comma separated string. We offer amazing features like customize your birthday wish and ignore people selectively. At midnight daily, a cron job runs automatically which queries the birthdays on that day and they are wished !! We are planning to incorporate a birthday calendar and email/ SMS alerts.

What more should we expect from you?

We are constantly thinking of something. We will evolve this application and hopefully come out with cooler apps and innovations soon.

We at YourStory wish the trio all the best and eagerly await to see what comes next.