Two former Indian employees created ad free search engine Neeva to compete with Google, will launch in four months
Soon a new search engine made of two Indians will be available as an alternative to Google. Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, an IIT alumnus and Google’s ex-employee, will launch Neeva search engine as an ad-free and private search product this year. This will be a paid product.
Ramaswamy said that over time, the pressure to show more and more ads has increased on companies, which users do not really want. Therefore our thesis is that we create a better search product, which focuses only on the customer’s needs. Ramaswamy understands this issue well, as he has been a senior vice-president of ad and commerce at Google.
They also run their travel, shopping and search infrastructure team. Raghunathan studied at IIT Mumbai and was previously the Vice President of Monetization on YouTube. Similarly, Vivek was the first tech lead of Google Assistant. Vivek is a graduate from IIT Chennai.
The company has raised funds of 273 crore rupees
Neeva has a team of 45 people in the US and the company plans to rollout it in four-five months. It will be rolled out first in the US and then in Western Europe, Australia and India. Ramaswamy says that we have a large team of engineers, designers and product managers and backers. Neeva has so far raised $37.5 million (Rs 273 crore) from its own investments by Greylock, Sequoia Capital and Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy said that this is quite different from the product people are using right now, which provides a single window for searching and queries in personal data on services such as Dropbox and email accounts. We have to revisit core technology because at some level, things like how you crawl the web, how to do basic indices are the same. Like Google, Neeva will also use AI and machine learning for search.
User data completely safe
Regarding personal data, Ramaswamy says, “We guarantee that the product and the company are designed in such a way that personal data is indexed only for better results. It is not for anything. We have created a company for the customers only. We want to make sure that it is a revenue source company. “The company also says that data will never be sold in any form ‘and the search history will be deleted by default after 90 days. (Google removes search history by default after 18 months.)
Rivals may have to cut ads
He said that we are aware of the challenges of a paid product, and want to ensure that it is excellent. For Ramaswamy, it is his inspiration. Citing the example of services like Spotify and Dropbox, he said that it was successful in its segment, where there were plenty of free options available. Hopefully, Neeva can force its rivals to cut back on ads.
