Pajap.com

Pajap provides an innovative mobile service, which provides new routes in native mobile application development, end user experience and advertising methods.

   

We had a very interesting in-depth interview with Mr. ‘Giannis Zaoudis‘, Co-Founder and COO of the US (Delaware)-based start-up “Pajap Inc.”.

“Pajap” is a DIY mobile apps service with a new technology that allows you to create full featured 100% native and hardware accelerated mobile applications.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Zaoudis’ regarding his start-up web-based development company “Pajap”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Pajap” is all about?

Pajap provides an innovative mobile service, which provides new routes in native mobile application development, end user experience and advertising methods. Specifically, using Pajap a high-quality native mobile application, worth of many thousands of dollars, can be created in minutes by everyone without a single line of code. Furthermore users of this app don’t have to install it on their phone. They just open it using Pajap market, QR code scanning or just tapping a web link from their browser. Applications are updated on the fly without any update process. Pajap aims to make the creation and use of native applications as easy and as seamless as websites without compromising any of the advantages of native apps. Pajap technology can lead to the next generation of super-rich, dynamic, interactive mobile ads.

2. When has “Pajap” been founded? And what stage is “Pajap” currently at?

Pajap Inc. has been founded just a few months ago, in May 2012 and we are currently building some strong relationships with current and future clients. Furthermore, we are developing the next generation of our library which will support even more great features such as camera and more. Finally we are in the process of creating a strong board team in order to design next years roadmap.

3. What is “Pajap”‘s business model and how does it work?

Pajap is subscription based and the business model is freemium. Applications made with the free tier will display ads from Pajap ad network and other major ad networks (such as AdMob). The freemium model will also work as a conduit to increase the reach of Pajap ad network to a more extensive user/application base. For enhanced application capabilities, features and larger user capacity a higher tier will be needed with a monthly fee.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

Pajap currently consists of three software engineers, John Papadakis, Giannis Zaoudis and Stefanos Mpliatsios. We met 7 years ago at the university when we came to Patras to study Computer Engineering. All these years, we have been close friends and we have worked together in many IT projects. The fact that each one of us had experience in a different field of expertise but most importantly that we’ve been friends all these years and had worked together many times, made clear to us, that we were the right persons to join the team and work together on this project. So we believe that we have a great level of communication, which will help getting this project done, that wouldn’t be easy to find in another team no matter what their knowledge and expertise is.

John Papadakis is the person, which initially had an idea, which after almost a year of discussion and planning took the form of Pajap. He is currently involved in the client side of Pajap that has to do with android development and with server infrastructure. He has three year experience in developing android applications. The applications, that he made, exist in the market currently and they are some of the best rated apps. Ioanni’s novel ideas and vision was the motive for him to create our team and work on this project.

Giannis Zaoudis is working on the server side of the project and he is in charge of the web designer along with the servers’ setup and administration. He is the person with the most experience in web technologies and web development. He has been working on web projects for 5 years, thus having a deep knowledge of how a web oriented system is structured. His experience was crucial for the team, since he had a major role in designing the web part of the project. He helped us decide which technologies and frameworks will be needed for this project.

Stefanos Mpliatsios is the all in one player of this team. In the one hand, his deep understanding in databases and on the other hand, his experience in mobile application development made him integral part of the team. He is responsible for all the backend aspects of our project, whilst in parallel he is responsible, with Ioannis Papadakis, of the UX of the mobile application.

The most important thing, which we believe makes this team strong and able to produce a high quality product is the commitment, of each one of us, into this project. All three of us believed from the start in the project and made clear that we would be available to dedicate as much time is needed building this project. Our top priority is to build a high quality product and in order to achieve that, we rejected other opportunities and offers for jobs. Furthermore we have adjusted our working space and transformed it in to a house where we are working full time in this project. As far as skills that the team is missing we would say, that there is lack of experience in the finance field, which is crucial for a business but nonetheless can be overcome.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

We have found the common ground between native and web applications!!

Users browsing Pajap-based applications can either open an application or “pin” an application as a shortcut. Opening an application requires an active internet connection, only for the first time. When a user opens an application, for the first time, it launches (“installs” and opens) in less than a second, depending on the network speed. The experience for the user is like opening an already-installed application. This feature provides a novel way in the use of mobile application. Until now, such an experience can only be found in the way websites operate. Usually, users have to go through a time-expensive process of installing an application. The whole process actually consists of the following parts, Market search ->selecting an application -> confirm permissions -> confirm installation. Furthermore applications occupy space at the device, thus a user, who wants an application just for one-time use may choose not to install that particular application. On the other hand websites, which don’t require installation, are way more user-friendly at this.

“No installation” is a Pajap innovation, which allows leveraging the application usage to an entirely different way. A user may open an application for a local store, restaurant, which in any other circumstances may never have installed. A website link or a QR code can be linked to a Pajap application that opens instantly to the user’s mobile phone. Moreover, native applications have other disadvantages like updating them. Users have to update their mobile applications, which is a procedure that many users tend ignore, since it is as time-consuming as the installation. Additionally, with Pajap, every time a user opens a Pajap-based application will be delivered with the latest version of that application. Modified layout, new product offers, new album covers, new top stories new UI layout, or even entirely different functionality of an app will be delivered instantly to the users of that application as the publisher intended. The update process of a Pajap-based application is entirely transparent to the user, since it happens when opening the app. In conclusion, this is the most innovative feature of Pajap, according to which applications can be modified daily in order to share a better experience with the end-user.

Pinning an application is the equivalent of installing an ordinary application. A shortcut is created at the mobile‘s home screen giving the illusion that this app is installed on the device. When the Pajap application-shortcut is selected then the specific application will open as any other app. The specific app will be opened as a stand-alone app and will be performing as top quality native apps are performing.

Pajap applications can be extracted as different apps so that developers can publish to the markets for themselves. These apps will exist also in the Pajap market, in order to exploit its features like geo-apps, which will be explained thoroughly later. Users that find these apps from the regular marketplaces will have to install that app as usual but they will not have to update it.

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