Taskulu.com, new competitor in online project collaboration platforms with over 14000 international users, came in third among 100 startups from 40 counties at Startup Istanbul Challenge 2015.
Taskulu, an online project collaboration platform with over 14000 international users, came in third among 100 startups from 40 counties at Startup Istanbul Challenge 2015.
"This was our first accomplishment in international events, and it won't be our last," says Farhad Hedayatifard, co-founder and CEO of Taskulu.
"We're proud to be helping over 14000 users from all over the world within a few months of our public launch and our skyrocketing growth rate is a proof that world-class software can be made in emerging countries too."
Taskulu is a cloud-based online collaboration platform that unifies task management, real-time chat and time tracking into a single interface. It also provides deep, 2-way integrations with other services such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, Dropbox, Github, Gitlab and Appear.in and aims to bring extensibility and customizability into the Online Collaboration SaaS sector.
The co-founders, Farhad Hedayatifard and Kazem Keshavarz, had years of software development and team management experience when they started Taskulu after being frustrated with using multiple tools and managing several sub-projects to manage a single project and communicate with their team.
"We wanted to build something that would help small to medium-sized software development companies work with their teams and clients without the pain of using and scattering their data into several different tools. We believe that successful collaboration depends on task management and clear communications and that these two features should not be separated from each other. We also believe that every team and project is different and one size does not fit all: While Taskulu is very simple by default, you'll be able to customize it and add more functionality to your projects based on your own needs. We're not competing with other tools available on the market, we're defining a new market for people who are tired of using multiple tools and going through the pain of switching to a new tool every time their requirements change," Hedayatifard says.
Taskulu was one of the top 10 teams who graduated from Avatech Accelerator in Tehran last May and has received seed funding from Iranian and international investors.
"We started with the international market in mind and we're sure that we'll be the symbol of the startup ecosystem growth of emerging countries like Iran," Hedayatifard added.
He adds, "There are many challenges on our way. The sanctions on Iran prevented us from accepting payments from our international customers (who make up over 60% of our user base). But the tables are turning fast and we've proven our ability to survive during these hard times."
Startup Istanbul Challenge is attracting more and more startups from the Middle East, Europe and Africa with every passing year and is the leading startup event in the Eurasia region. This year, over 1500 startups applied to participate in the Challenge and 100 were selected.
This year's Challenge kicked off on October 1 and concluded on October 5. During the first 4 days of the Challenge the 100 selected startups were practicing their pitch and received training and mentorship from over 20 mentors at the Microsoft Turkey office in Istanbul and 15 startups were selected to pitch on the stage on October 5.
www.taskulu.com
