Seva Call plans for DC Launch and new interns

We have some big plans for this upcoming summer!  We are planning to officially announce the launch of Seva Call’s service in cities across the United States starting with our home base of Washington D.C. and expanding from there.  Also on the horizon is the announcement of the release of our mobile apps for Apple iOS and Google Android platforms.  These apps will offer the same basic function as the website, but will be available for customers to use remotely from their smartphones.

In other summer news, we have taken on a whole new team of interns for summer of 2012.  They come from a variety of backgrounds and areas of expertise, ranging from computer programming to marketing to writing.  It is an exciting time for these interns to be a part of Seva Call with the upcoming launches of Seva Call service in cities across the country.

Since mid February, Seva Call has been live in open beta.  Although we have not officially announced our service, if anyone finds their way to the Seva Call website, our virtual concierge service for finding high quality business professionals is up and running.

During our open beta period, we’ve successfully matched consumers with service professionals all over the country, including in Maryland, Virginia, New York, California, Pennsylvania, Texas, Missouri, Florida, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and more!  We have been used for over 20 service and professional categories, from plumbers to computer repair to dentists to lawyers.  This is just a preview of the excitement that’s coming up when we actually announce Seva Call in all of these areas.

All hard work deserves a celebration. About a month ago, Seva Call hosted a closing dinner for a group of its investors. The dinner marked the first day we released the website in open beta for the general public (you know you need a service). The dinner was a chance for Seva Call to inform investors of its progress as well as receive feedback regarding its future plans. Some investors stayed to give input on aspects such as writing and the business logo. The festivities were enjoyed over delicious food from Popeyes and Moby Dick’s House of Kabob.

Seva Call just made serious waves in the business world a few weeks ago by raising $1.3 million in first round funding to help support the launch of our service, which is a search engine geared toward matching consumers with local businesses.  The funding came from a number of venture capitalists and other angel investors.

There were a lot of noteworthy people who invested in Seva Call.  Some of these people include Andrew Bachman, the President and Co-Founder of Tatto Media (which was acquired by OzuraWorld), David Krauskopf, one of the Founding Members of Blu Venture Investors and former General Manager of Apple Russia, Krishna Subramanian, Co-Founder of Blue Lithium (which was acquired by Yahoo) and MobClix (which was acquired by Velti), and Jay Virdy, CEO and Co-Founder of Summize (which was acquired by Twitter) and LocalEyes (which was acquired by AOL).  It’s exciting to know that some of these successful businesspeople believe in what Seva Call can do!

You can see some of the coverage by the media outlets on our press page.

Welcome back!  I would like to personally say thank you to all of our interns who were with us this summer.  They contributed a lot to the Seva Call team including creating cool videos and episodes of our mini-series called “The Interns”, web development, Android app development, business development, and all the other types of development that is needed for Seva Call to get to the next level.

So what’s ahead for us next?  We recently got a call from a fan who found us on the web and was really excited about what we are doing and was wondering when we are launching the service.  We told him soon, and our goal is to launch the service in closed beta DC-MD-VA area within the next few weeks.  You might be wondering why it’s taking so long.  The truth is that at our goal at Seva Call is to ensure quality results and we can’t provide that until we have reached a minimum threshold of businesses that have been vetted and verified to make sure they are still in business and operating so that we can provide our consumers faster matches and connections.

Hello people of earth, for one last time, it is me.

I sit here on the last day of my internship at Seva Call with a heavy heart and an even lighter wallet.  I’ve had so many important experiences here, and made some wonderful new friends.  I think it’s safe to say that I’ll remember my summer here for a long time.

Among the things I’ll miss are; writing/filming videos, researching random things for articles, eating more peanut m&ms in a day than anyone should have in a week, tweeting out my thoughts, constantly pushing other interns’ feet out of my chair, and finally, writing to you all in this blog.

I hope you all fair well in your endeavors, and when you think of me, and my blog, I hope it makes you smile.

#IloveSevaCallInternship

Improving the Seva Call social media presence has been a goal of ours this summer, and yesterday we hit a big milestone: we got over 10,000 Seva Call Twitter followers!  We’re all really excited about the progress, but we won’t let the milestone slow us down.  We’re going to take the good feeling we get from this and use it as motivation for us to reach our next, and bigger milestones.

Hello people of earth, we meet again.

I apologize for the lack of postage on the blog; we’ve all just been so busy with Seva Call like the space shuttle that I’m afraid I’ve neglected to keep you all updated on our daily goings on. I will rectify that immediately.

Everyone is working diligently on their own projects. Our programmers are working away, improving the website and creating the android app. As a non-programmer, I’m still stunned by their ability to type in code and create these beautiful interactive pages. I feel like they are either geniuses or wizards. Recently I’ve been leaning more towards wizards, but that’s probably because I’ve been marathoning through all the Harry Potter movies in preparation for the midnight release of Deathly Hallows Part II on Thursday… I’m that cool. But whether they’re using wizardry or not their, work is pretty amazing, and I’m really excited to see the reaction when it becomes public.

Other interns have been working intently on cleaning up the database, making sure all the companies in it are up to our high standard. From what I hear, they’ve been working through the directory alphabetically, so right now apparently our high standard includes starting with an ‘A’ or a ‘Z.’ I’ve been told, however, that our standard is expanding even as I write, and the other 24 letters in the alphabet will be represented, soon.

As for me, I’ve been working diligently on various types of public relations and marketing. I wrote a few press releases about the prestigious awards Seva Call has been a finalist for—feel free to take a look at the ‘press room’ section of the Seva Call website to admire my fine handy work. I’ve also been working on the web series ‘The Interns’ which is both—hopefully—entertaining and highlights Seva Call’s awesomeness. I’ve also started a twitter account called JosietheIntern to promote those videos. You should also feel free to check me out over there. I keep people in the loop with everything that’s going on at Seva Call, let people know when a new ‘The Interns’ video comes out, and give people insight into the twisted workings of my brain. Here is a sample tweet: “One of the great mysteries of my life is how Phineas & Ferb is always trending on twitter.” Please don’t be intimidated by my brilliance.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for you today, kind people. Don’t be a stranger. Unless, of course, you are a stranger, in which case you should probably act like one, otherwise that would be creepy.