IBM SmartCamp Finalist Profile: Localytics — Everything You Needed To Know About Your Mobile App, But Were Afraid To Ask

One of our San Jose State University interns for the day asked the most basic of questions, but it elicited the most elaborate of responses: What do you like most about being an entrepreneur?

Raj Aggarwal, CEO of Localytics, one of the nine IBM SmartCamp Global Finalists, learned a few lessons from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, whom Aggarwal once consulted with on the iPhone strategy. Aggarwal's firm provides what the company describes as the "most powerful mobile application analytics platform."

Raj Aggarwal, CEO of Localytics, a real-time analytics platform for mobile application developers answered this way: “Because you can have an impact you couldn’t have otherwise have had.”

He went on to explain: “Different people have different paths.  Some get out of college and do a startup.  For others, being in the industry and in an environment gives real exposure to what the problems were, real insight we wouldn’t have otherwise have had.”

Not unlike the current Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, Aggarwal had worked at Bain Consulting and had, in fact, spent some time counseling Steve Jobs and Apple on their iPhone strategy back in 2005, well before the iPhone launched.

Aggarwal said he learned a lot from his interactions with Jobs, namely, how important it was to be hands on and involved in the critical details, and also his willingness to take risks.  “What I learned [from Steve Jobs] is how important it was to actually be there and driving the process, how much impact one individual could make in an organization.”

Aggarwal has brought those lessons forward into Localytics, a tool that offers most powerful application analytics platform for mobile app publishers. Localytics works across the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 platforms, making it platform agnostic and creating an instant broad market opportunity for the startup.

In fact, Localytics prides itself on being the only real-time service, providing the session-level detail and data access demanded by the top mobile app publishers in the industry.

Aggarwal’s not opposed to even spreading a little FUD to get folks hooked on his product.  He explains from looking at his own service’s data that “26% of users on mobile devices use those apps only once!”

The more you know about your mobile apps, he seems to suggest, the more you have the opportunity of NOT being among that 26%!

And The Winner Is…

If the suspense was killing you, the winner of the IBM SmartCamp New York competition has been announced.

And the winner is…Localytics!

Great name.  And also a great idea.

Localytics providers real-time data analysis that helps the makers of mobile phones and tablet apps better understand their clients.

How cool is that?!

Congrats to Localytics, and all the other participants and semi-finalists (along with winners of prior city instances of SmartCamp).

Localytics was selected from more than 200 entries from around the world, and the NY finalists’ all had technology and business models that capitalized on the growing opportunity to apply analytics to data.

On the topic of analytics, IBM recently introduced a new program entitled “What’s Your AQ?”

The sitelet allows you to take IBM’s “Analytics Quotient” test to measure how ready you and your team are to apply insight to your strategy, processes and tactics.

The more your embrace analytics, the higher your AQ!