Riya.com

For six months now I have been trying to finalize the name and URL we were going to launch with. What an ordeal this was. As many of you know we first named the company Ojos. I got ojos-inc.com and thought we would eventually get ojos.com. A mining company with operations in Chile owned it but wasn't using it. For months and months I called the guy listed on the registrar, Mark and he didn't return my call. I called the CEO of the company and I called the technical contact (who did answer my call ) but in the end no call from Mark.


Next I began looking at lots of different variants. The guy who owned Ojo.com, Joel. Said he wanted $100K then said, I'm not even sure I'd sell it for that. The company who owned Wink.com, first told me they wouldn't sell it, then told me they would, then told me some else had bought it for $90-100K.


Geesh... we are definitely in a bubble. I've been through one bubble and I just wasn't going to fall into same bubble cash spending cycle again. We've been very careful with our money at Ojos and I didn't want to waste so much money on a URL.


Two weeks ago here, I talked about how Azhar had a close family member in the hospital. For his own privacy I didn't want to talk about it, but I now have his and his wife Zianab's permission. It turns out that Azhar's 3 month old daughter Riya needed a heart operation. She was born with a smaller Aorta and the doctors needed to enlarge it (kind of like a angioplasty).


Riya is a fighter and a strong girl. She had her operation and within 24 hours was a smiling and laughing little girl (something she did less frequently before the operation). Everything went well. So with Azhar's blessing, we are going to name the Ojos product "Riya". I expect our Alpha will not be perfect and we will have to fight to make it so. Riya has inspired us all.


Now of course I needed the URL. However, this time the kindness of a man named Sanjay Shah from Boston (no relation to me) came to the rescue. Sanjay also has a daughter named Riya, but after hearing about Azhar's story decided to give us the name so we could use it as the name of our product. He didn't ask for a dollar. Thank you Sanjay.

So when we launch the alpha next week we will launch the product as Riya (www.riya.com). Click here to see a smiling photo of Riya and Deven from last weekend here (we are still changing over the logo, etc). Let little Riya look inside your photos and help you recognize people...;-)

And for you skeptics... yes it is a four letter URL.

Comments

[Tejas Patel]

Good. although I get redirected to http://www.riya.com/html_download.html page when I visit the link.

[Ho John Lee]

Congratulations on finding a name. I think "Riya" will be easier for people to figure out than "Ojos" when they hear or read the name anyway.

Looking forward to trying it out.

[Munjal Shah]

Tejas - Working on the link... not sure what the issue is. Ho John - thanks for the comments... ya - Ojos was a bit of a mouthful.

[vikram]

congrats... nice name and a four letter one too.!

[Sid]

Riya is a wonderful name and congratulations for getting the domain! Well it even rhymes with RIA though I am yet to find out how AJAXy Ojos actually is. Can't wait for you to release the service, and a Web API for it!

[zainab]

its been a hard uphill journey but i have been repeatedly blown away by the sheer perseverence, hard work and pure determination shown by all of the team.

riya and i are so proud to be part of the this team and just wanted to say we have the utmost faith in you -- all of you -- making this a success!

[Kevin Burton]

Hey...

Riya works. Good name.

Nice to hear you didn't fall for the 5 figure domain purchase.

I think its better to just come up with something nonsensical and then brand it.

Kevin

[Jan Moryson]

Nice having such a story as a background to a software.
I wish you much success!

[Amrit]

Hi Munjal.

Congratulations on all the new developments. I've been reading/hearing about this technology for a long time...came to your website via TechCrunch. I hope you people go places with Riya (with the baby and the software). I'll be keeping in touch.

All the best!

[JD]

Riya is definitely a very good name, short and catchy. And I didn't know that people are asking 90k for a domain name!

Good luck with Riya,
JD

[Munjal Shah]

Thanks for the kind wishes everyone.

[Gregory Narain]

My best to both Riyas. Thanks for sharing that wonderful story.

[Justin Gardner]

100K for Ojo.com or Ojos.com? Might seem ridiculous at first, but I wonder how much Eye.com or Eyes.com would go for...

In any event, I agree with the other commenters. Riya.com is a better name. Not only is it much more phonetic than Ojo (oho?), but the story that goes along with it is extremely touching. And I'm sure little Riya won't mind having a technology as interesting as yours named after her.

Good luck. Can't wait to use it.
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[molly]

hey
how can i get my self an invitation?
it's look great!

thank's

[manish]

Congrats! Riya is a wonderful name. We named our daughter Riya. Good luck with the launch.

[shadowbq]

Congrats, really looking forward to seeing this project when it goes public.

[Sunil]

Hi Mrunjal
Superb concept, superb name. I am a basically Gujju working Bangalore. Please let me know how can I get invite of riya? I am really eager to use it.

Sunil

[Olivier]

Hello Munjal,

Great project! Great team! Great name! I wish you all the best of luck and success.

It would be interesting to see this concept applied to videos as well.

Thank you for making it free.

Olivier