How many times during the lockdown have you felt like screaming your lungs out, hurling abuses or just the plain old ranting? Sure, we call our family and friends, who are only one call away, but sometimes, you want to do it without judgment or having to feel guilty for burdening someone else with your grief. In such circumstances, VentAllOut, a social media platform, might prove to be very useful. This website and app, available on Android and iOS, is different from anything you have ever seen. Not only can you remain anonymous on it, but it also allows you to earn money while you vent. Now we have your attention, don't we?
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After amassing 19 years of experience in the card payment industry, including being the Senior Vice-President at Mastercard in Dubai, Sumit Mittal decided to start a venture of his own. "The currency on social media platforms is the number of friends or followers you have. Also, bragging about ‘the good life’ is rampant. But we wanted to develop a platform where you can talk about your problems," says the Delhi-based entrepreneur. And that's the genesis of VentAllOut, a platform launched in 2017 on which you can post about your problems with anonymity. So instead of screaming, getting irritated or frustrated with the smallest of things while staying home, express on VentAllOut! You can choose between as many as eight vernacular languages like Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, Bengali and others. This helps with their appeal to Tier II and Tier III cities as well.
Green bent of mind
"Now that people are stuck at home, this is when our platform can be more useful. This is where the monetary aspect comes in. But we are not saying you can earn a very handsome amount," says the founder. If you post a 'Vent', which is what they call a post wherein you express your frustration or anguish, that has more than 100 words, and/or a comment that is more than 50 words, then you stand a chance to win a humble amount of Rs 12. "It's not much, but it creates a wow factor which is what one requires sometimes when one is angry," he explains. Of course, the content also needs to be original and shouldn't spark any anti-national sentiments or offend any religious ones.
Other features
This Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled platform, depending on what you post, keeps track of your mood which helps you analyse how your temperament has been. The mood board which it creates helps you keep track of all your moods. There is also a voice-to-text feature that helps those who don't have the patience to text, which is usually the case when one is frustrated. They also have a few therapists, psychologists, life coaches and motivational speakers on board, though they are not a counselling platform, just in case someone doesn't just need to vent, but needs some additional help as well. But what about more important issues like abuses and negativity? Because when a platform encourages one to express their frustration, there are bound to be the usage of swear words. "A backend algorithm carefully masks abuses and then there is the Report Abuse option that users have access to. The accused is then reprimanded once and if they repeat the action, the account is deleted altogether. Our backend team ensures that there is no objectionable content, like pornography and such, and take it down," says the engineer with a double MBA and two patents in the US. He also informs that there have been a handful of cases like this and almost all the users are responsible enough to make use of the platform for its intended purpose. In fact, when Irrfan khan passed away, there was an outpour of grief on their platform. Then, there was an instance where a question like 'Is our culture more important than imbibing US culture?' was posed. Clearly, the platform is serving multiple purposes.
VentAllOut has as many as 12,000 subscribers who hail from India majorly but also the Philippines, the US, the UK, Switzerland and a few other countries as well. "With the vernacular languages, we are expecting to engage users from the South East and other Asian countries," says the entrepreneur. And they are hoping that this monetary aspect encourages more and more people to express all their pent up emotions instead of bottling it all up and exploding one day.
For more on them, check out ventallout.com
