Oksana Sokolovsky hadn’t intended to smash the glass ceiling for women when she partnered to create a tech startup company in Jersey City. But she’s happy that more than half of the employees of her new firm are women. Traditionally, tech start-ups generally employ less than 35 percent women. More importantly, less women make up less than 3 percent of those who found technology startups.
An innovation of Sokolovsky and Rohit Mahajan, her company, Rokitt, will begin unveiling a series of digital applications this summer. Major innovations include an app that creates three-dimensional images from pictures and drawings and one that helps small businesses announce special sales locally.
Unlike many of traditional startups in the male-dominated industry, Rokitt isn’t operating in the back of a garage. It is also avoids the stereotypical image of employing all boys who dropped out of college to get into technology.
“We see ourselves as corporate drop-outs,” Sokolovsky said. “We wanted to create our own technology startup.”
Typically, the members of the Rokitt staff gather in a room with a large white board and brainstorm, seeking ideas that they can evolve into technological innovations. When they get a few they think will fly, their tech people make them work.
“We want products that will have the most impact,” Sokolovsky said.
Currently, the firm is about to launch as many as seven different applications over the summer.
Sokolovsky said she is in a hurry, needing to make an impact right away. She said she believes the middle years of life are the most productive, and since she spent half of hers in corporate America, she needs to get her stuff out into the world quickly.
The company currently has more than 90 employees worldwide, with nearly half of them working out of the main office in Jersey City.
Sokolovsky and Mahajan come out of the banking industry, while Rupa Boddu, an employee, came to the startup from Wall Street.
The company up came together last August with multiple offices in Ukraine, India, and Jersey City
She said she insisted on starting up in Jersey City as opposed to New York. She wanted to create a startup company on the East Coast, partly to prove that not all of this technology needs to be developed in Silicon Valley in California.
“Jersey City is just as viable a location for a tech revolution as California,” she said. In fact, that’s what she intends to create – her own tech revolution
She said they have a lot of ideas they are working on, as many as 20.
“Most people go slow, but not here,” she said. “I want to go fast.”
Sokolovsky came to the United States from Ukraine in 1989. She worked towards a degree and PhD in psychology, but also studied computer science. She moved to New Jersey in 2001.
On a mission to help educate people
While they are focused a lot of applications for handheld devices, these are not the only focus of the company. They have started their own tech camps to help train people.
The growth of mobile application development has caused a shortage of qualified people for development, and so they set up their own tech camps to train people.
“Most people do not have experience in the field to be able to provide testing services for tech industry, and those attending tech boot camp get the experience,” said Boddu.
While the company is not exclusively for women, she and the other organizers of the company do have a social agenda designed to help women in the United States and globally, promoting women entrepreneurs.
A help center for entrepreneurs started in a smaller form in India, but now is international.
Boddu said women in India often didn’t know how to market their crafts, and generally sold only to friends.
Sokolovsky said helping women learn the nuts and bolts of business allowed them to make their way in a world that is otherwise dominated by men.
“We’re teaching them very tangible skills such as to how legally incorporate, how to deal with taxes, set up a website, and deal with banks,” Boddu said
Candice Osborne, who currently serves as a councilperson in Jersey City, was recently hired to help with outreach and other aspects of the tech firm. But she said she really believes in the mission to help women.
“Women are often home raising kids and so do not have access to the informal networks where business connections are often made,” she said. “This helps get around that.”
Apps with impact
With a host of apps that will be unveiled shortly, one of the most interesting is one they call “Augmented Reality.”
“You know how people want to go into virtual reality?” Sokolovsky asked. “In that situation, reality is changed, you are in some other world, usually in a game world. Our ‘Augmented Reality’ is in this world. We want to make an object more real.”
While this has a number of possible uses, Sokolovsky said she sees a huge impact in education and real estate.
In a few steps, people can create their own 3-D images. She pointed to a picture of a heart in a book.
“It may not look like a heart, but with a few steps, you can use a smart device such as a pad to give an image of a real heart,” she said.
This is not difficult with this app. And unlike many of the virtual reality apps that are used by large institutions, it isn’t expensive either.
With real estate, a broker, using a number of photographs as the base, can provide three-dimensional representations of the spaces they are seeking to sell or rent. They can adapt the images adding furniture and other features that a client might want.
Another app that will be launched this summer improves upon existing trip planning systems that will allow travelers to plan trips more easily, especially when it involves a number of parties coming from multiple locations.
Sokolovsky said the current systems are out of date, many relying on a model that is already 20 years old.
In June, she and others will approach local businesses with an app called Try-Lokal, a marketing device that can be used in conjunction with other media to draw customers into stores or professional offices.
She said large companies often have to rely on massive sales promotions, coupon sales, and such. Try-Lokal is designed to appeal to mom-and-pop shops, and small firms, stores, and other businesses.
She said a store might have left-over product on a particular day, and would be willing to sell it off locally. People would have ability to check on local stores and professional services for such last minute offerings. This applies to any local business such as a nail salon that on a slow day might offer a deal, but would otherwise just post a sign in their window, she said.
Flashing a sale for small business can instantly put the sale notification out to the neighborhood.
“Our focus has not been on the big chain stores that have large advertising budgets, and this isn’t about putting advertising out for the week or a month, this is about today, something that will allow people to look at a simple interface or app as they go about their daily lives,” Boddu said.
Osborne said this app would take the place of e-coupons but would not drain the profit a store makes from these quick sales.
“This also fits in with the city’s promotion of small business in downtown and other parts of the city,” Osborne said, referring to a proposal by Major Steven Fulop to limit the number of large chain stores in the Downtown section of Jersey City.
“Our goal is to boost small business revenues,” Sokolovsky said “This is a product that will be launched in Jersey City as a pilot city.”
Rokitt will begin meetings with the city and local business associations in June for a potential public launch in July.
“Clearly the city is focused on building neighborhoods, and having neighborhoods, and with local businesses, the money tends to stay in Jersey City vs. chain stores where the money goes out of the city,” Osborne said. “This also could mean more jobs since small business tends to hire local people.”
She noted, “The application would be free to the public with an option to buy more enhanced features.”
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.