Mnemonic Dictionary (www.mnemonicdictionary.com)

Short of words for GRE, GMAT or even CAT? You feel you are wasting your time and energy remembering all the difficult words? We present to you a solution -The Mnemonic Dictionary (www.mnemonicdictionary.com), which is going to help you in memorizing all these scary words.

Mnemonic Dictionary(MD) helps people retain and recall new words. MD provides memory aids (called mnemonics) for each word. Mnemonics is a connect to-be-remembered meaning of words with a systematic and organized set of images or words that are already firmly established in long-term memory and can therefore serve as reminder cues.

In an exclusive interview to the GeekOnNet team, Amit Aggarwal founder of MnemonicDictionary.com speaks about his company, its goals and future plans.

Founder: Amit Aggarwal
Founder's Background: B.Tech. Chemical Engineering, IIT-Bombay.
http://in.linkedin.com/in/amitaggarval

The Geeks: What inspired you to start MnemonicDictionary?
Amit: The idea for mnemonic dictionary came when I was still in college and was preparing for GRE. This exam primarily lays a lot of emphasis on vocabulary and I would struggle for hours to memorize new words. This technique worked wonders for me and I wanted to reach out to all those students and professionals with similar concerns and to save them from the usual grind. Mnemonic Dictionary was launched after spending several hours on building quality content for the website.

The Geeks: How long have your website been functional? Can you please explain your "Business and Revenue Model"?
Amit: Beta version of Mnemonic Dictionary was launched in May 2007. We are exploring other revenue models but currently our website is making money only from online ad inventory.

The Geeks: Your website contains a lot of information. What technology do you use to maintain such huge database of words?
Amit: Mnemonic Dictionary uses SQL format of Princeton University data bank, Wordnet which consists of not less than 150,000 words.’ Mnemonics’ on the website are mainly contributed by the active members and users.

The Geeks: Name some of your competitors in the market. How do you differentiate your website from them?
Amit: Answers.com and Dictionary.com offer similar services but none of them provide mnemonics aid. Mnemonic Dictionary is the only place which provides memory aids along with meaning and usage for each word.

The Geeks: What was the biggest hurdle you faced and how did you overcome it?
Amit: Biggest hurdle was getting traffic on our website as we started with a very low budget of approx 80,000 INR and did not have any money to invest on the professional marketing of the website. We capitalized majorly on Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing. Currently, we are getting more than 1000 visitors daily only from search engines.

The Geeks: What are your future plans of expansion?
Amit: We are planning to publish our mnemonics data (for words in Barron) in the form of a book, so that users with constraints like poor net connectivity or inaccessibility to internet are not deprived of this wonderful technique of building vocabulary.

The Geeks: How do you publicize your website? Any big publicity campaigns coming up? What is your USP?
Amit: Word- of- mouth publicity has gone a long way in making us popular. Many GRE/GMAT/LSAT/CAT aspirants keep recommending the website to their peers’ .Also, our sound knowledge of SEO and SEM has helped us. The USP of our website is its powerful use of “mnemonics” to help in easy retention of words.

The Geeks: What background skill, knowledge and experiences help you in your business?
Amit: Experience and passion for web development and online marketing via SEO and SEM has made this journey rewarding for me.

The Geeks: My readers look at you entrepreneurs with a lot of respect and inspiration. We would like you to just give us some insight on your "mantra of success"?
Amit: I would like to quote famous lines of Shiv Khera
“Winners don’t do different things, they do things differently”
You just think how you can solve everyday problems differently and the rest would automatically fall in place.

We are very fortunate to have so many budding entrepreneurs in our country. We as GeekOnNet team is here to encourage their hard-work and talent. Our aim is to bring in more visibility and awareness for such startups. We hope all our avid followers help and support us in our novel initiative.

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