BRISBANE STARTUP BEATS GOOGLE TO ITS GMAIL PROBLEM

TWO young Brisbane entrepreneurs have beat Google to the punch and fixed an 11-year-old problem with Gmail.

Nish Bandara and David Uhlmann have morphed their startup, InstantContact, into a time-saving tool that can be used by billions of people the world over.

Both familiar with the tedious process of copying and pasting information to update email contacts - who are inclined to change jobs and companies, numbers and emails - Bandara and Uhlmann are making sure this is now an instant process.

InstantContact for Gmail is a web browser extension, currently available for Google Chrome, which automatically detects names, numbers, addresses, titles and companies so they can be saved to Google contacts in a single click.

The beauty of the solution is that InstantContact scans emails for important information automatically so whenever there is a change in details, it will suggest an update.

The platform is expected to soon be available for other contact management platforms, customer relationship management (CRM) systems and the Outlook email client.

Bandera says the charter of the umbrella company, InstantWork, is replacing the need for menial administrative work.

"We are working on a larger product suite that takes away data entry, copy and paste, and the really menial admin work that no one likes doing by coordinating applications that already exist and enriching personal databases automatically," he says.

Bandara and Uhlmann met at River City Labs, after Bandara exited from his first business, a structural engineering firm which delivered quick and cost-effective solutions to homeowners and SMEs. 

"My background in engineering, which is all about finding out a problem, has definitely helped," says Bandara.

"It was hard to leave a financially healthy business with four staff, but business just seems so much more scalable - I could reach international customers within about a month of starting, which really couldn't happen in engineering."

Bandara's most important piece of advice is to seek out time-saving tools in life and business.

"My advice is to just go for it - I came to River City Labs with an idea that I had toyed around with at the back of my mind, and then took a shortcut by doing Startup Weekend last year which helped us skip about six months of floundering about."