[App Fridays] The Eight app helps you smartly organise your business cards and stay connected

Eight uses AI-driven technologies to convert analog business card information to digital, thereby ensuring that business connections are available at your fingertips.

Have you ever found yourself struggling to recall the name of that person you met at an event which took place five months ago? I definitely have! We might have even exchanged business cards but in most cases, these would have been misplaced due to sheer absent-mindedness.

While exchanging physical visiting cards was the preferred global business etiquette at one time, in the current one-device-fits-all world where smartphones are taking over everything, their importance is slowly diminishing. They’re often relegated to a corner of your cluttered desk and forgotten. But getting in touch at the right time and staying connected is crucial to maintaining sound professional relationships, and the Eight App helps you do precisely that.

The story so far

Eight proposes up-to-date alternatives to managing business cards. The biggest professional network in Japan, the app was

recently launched in India by Sansan Inc., Japan’s leading cloud-based business card management company. They believe that chance encounters are too valuable to forget because it becomes a business only when everyone works together.

India represents a huge market for the company with a vision of creating a future of digitised business cards. To endorse the idea further, Sansan also launched the #TogetherMade campaign that reinstates the need to protect every contact because you never know who can help shape your success and career.

Eight is a networking platform that combines business card scanning features with social media functionality to link users. Data is automatically digitised by scanning business cards on a smartphone.  Once digitised, the recorded data can be accessed from anywhere, from any device, and can also be shared on SNS. The best part being the kind of accuracy the app maintains because all the data is digitised and worked on by humans.

I found that the app has a very easy-to-use interface. After you sign up, the app requires you to scan your own business card, making it your profile on the app. Once my identity was verified, I could use the app as I pleased. There is an option to update details about my career history, education and other personal information in the profile tab.

Eight does more than just scan business cards. The app has other features, including an option to connect with contacts over the app, a view to insights via a real-time news feed, recommendations for new connections and, of course, a privacy option to keep the user in control. Eight is fully integrated with the phone, so I can call or email directly from the app. If the contacts are also Eight users, then one can interact with them directly within the app, just like on a social network.

The app also comes with a premium option which allows users to export all the Eight contact data to the device. The paid version also lets users download all the network data if they need to send bulk mails. And if that wasn’t enough, the app gives premium users priority and more accurate data inputs too!

The app definitely gets bonus points for its sync option. Combine that with the user-friendly interface and the fact that it serves as a social network platform - it’s a win-win situation for everybody.

Eight seems to be the ultimate business card organiser and professional social network platform, all rolled into one app, with over one million downloads on both the PlayStore and iTunes. It solves a very huge business problem by digitising and providing a secure way to organise business cards and cultivate every contact.

Eight still has a long way to go in the international market. There is enough competition in the form of Haystack and CamCard, both popular digital business card solutions available in India. But Eight is doing well targeting Asian audiences because most users are very aspirational and young, meaning more users are looking to save contacts. In Japan, the app already has over two million users. They’re banking on the fact that India is brimming with aspiring entrepreneurs who know the importance of staying connected. Plus the app’s high accuracy rate and the social network feature will definitely keep the app going! It’s everything that the business world needs.

You can download the Eight App on Android and iOS here.