Discover new places through your friends
Yung Nam Cheah had a chat with Imperial graduate Krishan Patel, who founded the app Kites to help people discover their city through each other
Or have you ever found an amazing place tucked away in a city that you think you know everything about and wanted to share it to the world?
Whether the answers to both questions are correct, then Kites is the app for you. It allow users to view and write short recommendations anywhere in the world. Most interesting of all to us, however, is that the founder Krishan Patel started the apps during his underground Computing course as his final year project in Imperial.
Q: Give us a brief history of the app!
I started the app as my final year project and it was something that I enjoyed a lot. I spent more time than I should have on it and continued working on it part-time even after graduation. Before I started working on Kites full time in 2014 though I worked on anther start-up project which unfortunately didn’t work out.
Q: Why did you start Kites?
It might sound strange to some people, but I am not a fan of trying out new things in the real world without ‘knowing’ that they are going to be good. However, I am open to checking out new places if they are recommended to me by a friend. One example would be this Italian restaurant around the corner from Imperial (Da Mario’s) that I never knew existed until these guys from my group projects took me there. At first only my friends used it and we send private messages to each other, but then it gained traction and I opened it to the public.
Q: What was the idea behind it?
The idea is to allow people to find interesting things and learn new stuff about their city, or discover trivia that they would otherwise not known in a city they visited. It’s the little things like this is Princess Diana’s favourite restaurant. I have lived in London for 16 years and I love that there are still so many new places to discover.
I love twitter so I based the format of Kites on it, with a word limit (140) to keep the information concise. People can follow each other and favourite Kites and comment on it. Recently I have added a collection feature that can link Kites together to form a mini tour and I plan to expand on that!
Q: Why is it call Kites?
Originally when the app was still private, you would not be able to see the message until you are close by, kind of like a kite. I am also a fan of the letter K and the colour green, that’s how the name and logo came about. However I am open to changing the logo in the future.
Q: What are the weirdest Kites you ever came across?
There’s one in Taiwan which marks out a suicide hotspot; in London there’s this guy who mark a bunch of kites around his house. There’s also a lot of random messages of people saying hi and it takes some time to sort through them everyday.
Q: Do you have any favourites?
There is this guy who left a Kite for where you can see the best view of Seattle Monument which is a great insider tips and I love it.
Q: Where in the world has the most Kites?
For now London is taking the lead, but Kites is spreading all over the world and I am excited to see more.
Kites is available on both Android and Apple – why not check it out and find out what’s around the corner from you!
