Aloqa

Aloqa has solved two problems for mobile users: it takes away the need to type search terms into browsers or other mobile applications to find something, and also proactively recommends interesting local opportunities to users on the go. Wherever they are, users can simply glance at their phones and see which friends, favorite businesses, events like music concerts, local offers and other interesting places are close by, without having to launch a browser or search application. Aloqa takes into account the user’s location, preferences and social relationships to make these recommendations in real time.

“Aloqa makes mobile phones a lot more useful. As a user, it’s painful launching browsers and typing or speaking into apps. And even if doing searches becomes easier on mobile, it still doesn’t solve a bigger issue – every day all of us miss out on all kinds of opportunities we aren’t even aware of such as discovering friends who happen to be close by, or that there are concerts happening locally that we’d like, or sales and bargains all around us. Aloqa solves both the search and discovery issues by utilizing a user’s context – their location, time, preferences, and relationships – to notify them in real time of friends, places, events, and entertainment opportunities around them without delays” said Sanjeev Agrawal, CEO of Aloqa. 

About Aloqa

Aloqa is the first company to provide mobile users with context relevant alerts and notifications. Based on their location, preferences and social relationships, Aloqa users see what’s close to them without having to type anything into a browser or search application: their favorite businesses and points of interest, deals / coupons nearby, music performances and events, and Facebook friends in proximity. As they move, Aloqa refreshes automatically, so users never miss a social opportunity, event, or bargain.

PLEASE NOTE: On July 16, Aloqa (www.aloqa.com) announced  that it closed $1.5 million in series-A funding and opened a beta of its context-aware mobile application on Android handsets. Aloqa was also selected to demonstrate its application on stage at the MobileBeat Conference, hosted by VentureBeat in San Francisco, and was chosen as a "Winner of Tesla Award" -- The people's choice award at mobilebeat. 

Aloqa has also received some glowing coverage and comments in TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, AndroidGuys and others. Seel:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mobile_search_gets_a_push_aloqas_location-aware_app.php
 
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/former-googler-sanjeev-agrawal-to-lead-just-funded-mobile-search-startup-aloqa/
 
http://androidguys.com/?p=6023

Series-A Funding & CEO Appointment

Wellington Partners, and prominent angels involved in mobile and search technology, provided Aloqa with $1.5 million in series-A funding. Along with the funding Aloqa appointed Sanjeev Agrawal, former Global Head of Google Product Marketing and subsequently VP Products at TellMe Networks (acquired by Microsoft), as CEO. The company also established its official U.S. headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

Aloqa is a mobile service that proactively notifies users about interesting places, services, events, and people close to where they are. Once you download and start Aloqa, you need to just look at your phone and it shows you live information about interesting things in your vicinity like your favorite coffee shops, highly rated restaurants, local bargains and coupons, Facebook friends in the vicinity, even kid friendly events. When you change locations, Aloqa refreshes itself automatically and notifies you of the relevant set of services, points of interest, events, and friends close to your new location. Wherever you are, whenever you go.

In addition, Aloqa provides an API for easy development of location-based services, especially for proactive and community oriented applications. Examples contain detecting automatically the proximity of two mobile targets (such as Facebook friends), sorting a buddy list by current distance and automatically updating the list as well as clique observation (show me when 3 out of 5 of my myspace girlfriends are nearby).