Sansan launches the ‘Eight’ app in India to prepare 200 million workforce for collective success
NEW DELHI, INDIA - November 22, 2017 - Sansan Inc., Japan’s leading provider of cloud-based business card management services, has today launched the ‘Eight’ app in India. The company aims to fulfill its vision of transforming user connections in the country that has the world’s largest potential workforce. Pivoted on the power of connections and life changing moments catalyzed by chance encounters, Sansan is also going live with its maiden integrated campaign designed for India called #TogetherMade, onboarding Gul Panag as the key influencer.
Speaking at the launch event, Chika Terada, CEO, Sansan Inc. said, “For Asian professionals, the business card is a vital tool for networking and progression. More than 10 billion business cards are exchanged a year, and with Eight, we plan to not only streamline this process, but also add more value to it so that every connection counts for an individual. India represents a huge market for us due to its large English-speaking working population. We are focusing on India to help us reach our ultimate goal of creating the future of “no paper” business cards.”
The Eight app and the power of connection
The Eight app combines business card scanning features with social media functionality to connect users and enable them to capitalize on a superior networking platform. The app has implemented AI driven technologies and offers a new way to unleash the potential of business connections by converting analog business card information to digital. It ensures that business connections in India are available at everyone’s fingertips. With the Eight app, users can:
· Use their smartphone camera to digitize business cards
· Manage their contacts by digitizing business cards
· Connect with contacts over the app itself
· View insights through a real-time news feed
· Utilize complete integration with their phone for email/phone conversations
· Get recommendations of new connections
In Japan, Eight already has 2 million users, 5000 daily downloads and it also digitizes around 300,000 business cards every day. In India, connections are currency and upward mobility is highly driven by “who you know”, so Eight has brought a sophisticated and scalable business card digitization process that connects people in innovative ways. It intends to fix the management of business contacts without a lot of clutter and dissonance in the market.
In order to escalate the speed of digitizing business cards, Sansan will launch a business card scan partner program in India. Sansan provides its unique business card scanner to co-working spaces, chain shops such as coffee or tea chains where business persons come by, and facilities where more than 100 people visit per day. An Eight user can bring their large pile of exchanged business cards and save time to digitize them, which allows them to fully unleash the power of personal business connections. Sansan is also looking for business process outsourcing companies to create a joint operation to scan cards for Eight users. For those interested in this program, please contact here.
Edward Senju, Executive Producer of Eight added, “Since our establishment, we have continuously enhanced our transcription process to reach 99.8% accuracy, and to transcribe more than 200 million business cards a year in a secure way. By doing so, we have stored an enormous amount of data of business persons connections. Utilizing these data with AI technologies will help us provide new opportunities for our users.”
Protecting the Most Valuable Asset for Business Success with #TogetherMade
Eight will celebrate the connections that have helped create the success stories that inspire the country. Its integrated campaign, #TogetherMade, will show how every success, even “self-made” successes, are the result of so many chance encounters and contacts. It will reinstate the need to protect every contact as anyone could turn out to be the lucky connection that changes the course of a career.
The campaign will launch with a #TogetherMade brand film that reveals the untold story of Gul Panag and how a series of chance encounters put her on the path to a storied career as an actor, entrepreneur and adventurer. It tells us that success isn’t really self-made, but #TogetherMade, a combination of our efforts and people influencing our lives in a positive way. Eight will celebrate this power of chance encounters across paid, owned and earned channels, with content and stories that reinforce the need to protect every contact that could, one day in the future, be critical.
Gul Panag said, “In our country we love and celebrate the stories of the self-made. However, so much of our success is due to the people who support us in big and small ways throughout our careers. We must value and protect every connection because, as my own story shows, they can shape our success in innumerable and invaluable ways. I am thrilled to introduce Eight to India, a country of professionals characterized by unwavering ambition and untold potential.”
The app is now expanding its market reach and India represents the beginning of a journey that will enable Eight to help millions make their dreams into reality.
About Sansan Inc.
Since its founding in 2007, Sansan has focused on delivering its cloud based contact management service in Japan. It operates a B2B service, eponymously called Sansan, which is a business card-based contact management solution for companies. Sansan has over 6000 corporate users, including many international corporations and the Japanese government. In 2012, they began Eight, a B2C equivalent of Sansan. Like Sansan, Eight is a primarily business card-based contact management, but Eight also introduces integrated professional social networking and communication. With over 2 million registered users, Eight is the biggest professional social network in Japan, and is now beginning its expansion abroad.
