SNEHA RAMESH
IN
CONVERSATION
WITH
DINKAR
PATHAK,
CO-FOUNDER &
CEO, ACOOSTA
INNOVATIONS
What was your idea behind
the product and what were
you trying to achieve? Could you tell us a little
bit more about the unique
qualities of the product?
Music has always been an important
part of my family get-togethers, most
evenings my children used to dance
to Justin Bieber. They would eagerly
wait for me to come home every day
from office to stream their favorite
songs from my phone as it was the
only device we used to listen to music
from our Bluetooth speakers but with
constant calls and messages from
colleagues, we usually had to stop
the dancing and singing sessions so I
could attend to calls and answer my
texts, one day while we were having
a jamming session and I received
a call from a friend, I realized that
there has to be a better way to listen
to music that is easily accessible by
all- from my mother to my children.
That is when the idea of Acoosta
struck me. My kids always had the
complaint that they could not listen
to their music without being in front
of the TV as did not know how to
operate any of streaming apps. It is
safe to say that my children are the
inspiration behind Acoosta. After
which I approached Mr.Neeraj Sethi,
an industry veteran and my mentor
with this idea. This wasn’t the first
time I had presented a new business
model to him, but nothing seemed
to impress him before Acoosta. He
really liked the idea and thought
that this new age device had a lot of
potential. Neeraj and I then joined
forces to create Acoosta Innovations. Acoosta Uno is a high-fidelity
music system with built-in content
to provide an immersive listening
experience at the touch of a button
without any Internet or Bluetooth
connection. It is a music machine
that has a plethora of options to listen
to music and also sing along with
popular songs. The device is Powered
with Music by Sony DADC, Acoosta
Uno comes preloaded with 14,000+
Songs across 200+ Playlists from
over 1000+ Artists with 50+ Genres
& Moods that are super curated
by experts. Consumers can also
explore music via Bluetooth, USB,
FM and Aux inputs and has fully
functional Karaoke functionality.
We are very proud to state that
no other music system currently
in the market can offer all these
features in a single unit and that’s
what makes our product unique
compared to any other product.
As per our initial research, we
realized that we need a device in the
market that has the best of music for
all ages/moods/genres that could
independently play music without
any connections. We wanted to
provide consumers a quality audio
product that offers an immersive
listening experience so users with
quality music and easy access. Our
multi-functional music system is
platform agnostic, provides value
for money and delivers best in class
sound output backed with built in
music by the biggest music publisher
in the world – SONY DADC.
24
The
Score Magazine
highonscore.com
How has the response been
so far and what do people
like the most about it?
The response we have gathered
through our research is that our
speaker has been great both from
the trade and customers. Consumers
are really happy with the quality of
sound, the built-in music library and
are thoroughly enjoying the karaoke
functionality. Some call it a modern
day portable “jukebox” whereas some
are call it the “singing machine”.
We have reached out to more than
1000+ customers personally to gather
feedback and got great reviews.
Customers are now sending us their
song recordings, party photos, kids
dancing videos to show us how they
have been using the Acoosta Uno.
In an age where competition is
high and so many such products
are being launched, how do you
think your product stands out?
The whole idea around having the
most iconic music across various
genres (English + Hind) preloaded
on the device and offering a fully
functional karaoke system makes our