Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Website to help you find your missing things

We all have lost stuff, and not always to theft. Some things like keys and pens just drop off from the pocket. Bigger articles like+ purses, phones and even laptops get misplaced or forgotten somewhere. Someone invariably finds the lost article. But often, the finder is unable to return it because there is no way to contact the person who lost it. 

In an otherwise well-connected world, this is a missing link that stoked the imagination of Param Ram, a finance professional turned entrepreneur. He recalls an incident: "My wife and her friend were flying from Delhi to Bangalore. 

Just after passengers had boarded, there was an announcement. One passenger had someone else's laptop. Obviously there was a mix-up at the X-ray scanner. Passengers were asked to check their laptops. My wife's friend found that it wasn't her laptop in the bag. Luckily both were in the same flight." 

The incident set off an ideation process that led to the creation of lostclikfound.com (LCF), which Ram believes will be the Google of everything that people have lost. He says that the lost and found departments of airports, railway stations, malls, police stations etc are not only unorganized but they also don't talk to one another. "Our attempt is to bring them all together so that people can easily find whatever they have lost." 

The service also allows you to buy a tamper-proof tag for Rs 49, and stick it to a valuable. If it's lost, the finder can go to lostclikfound.com and key in the unique number in the tag to contact you. The website will be expanded soon by linking lost and found departments in the city. "Our aim is to rope in as many lost-and-found departments as possible," says Ram. "We are also planning to go to schools, where we want to inculcate the discipline of returning things. This is not just a product, but also a service." 

Ram is a post-grad in management from the Asian Institute of Management, Manila , and has 12 years of experience in the financial/insurance sectors. 

LCF was accelerated at Kyron. Lalit Ahuja, CEO, Kyron, says, "The product is a unique, compelling and much-needed proposition that will bring hope, predictability and structure to the ecosystem related to lost and misplaced valuables. 

By uniquely identifying a plethora of physical valuable products, LCF, through its user friendly online portal will help the owners track (and potentially recover) their valuables in an unfortunate situation of misplacing them."

Source: Times of India

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