Theres no doubt that for most folks on the internet, search is synonymous with Google.
However, theres a small yet growing audience that wants a privacy-first search experience with little or no ads.
Thats where Neeva comes in.
Whats on offer?
The company launched last year with a subscription-only model.
This cost$4.95 per month.
Now its trying to expand its footprint with a free tier.
Whats more, the new search engine lets your look through your email right from the search bar.
And if you install Neevas extension, it also blocks ad trackers that are collecting your browsing data.
Its likeGoogle auto-completeon steroids.
So it wasnt easy to launch in other geographies with accurate and customized local results.
But we definitely want to launch in India and Western Europe soon.
Ramaswamy said the firm aims to convert more than 5% of its free users to paying users.
However, that cant be the only revenue stream for an ad-free search engine.
So Neeva is also exploring partnerships to build customized enterprise-specific search engines for internal company usage.
What does success look like?
Its tough for a new search engine like Neeva to directly compete with the likes of Google and Bing.
Ramaswamy shares the same opinion and considers privacy-first search engines like DuckDuckGo and Brave as competition.
He also wants Neeva to become a go-to resource for trusted news and alerts.
The company has already partnered with news rating agencyNewsGuardto determine the accuracy of the information on a particular topic.
With Applestracking blocker on iPhonesand Googlemoving to a cookie-less world soon, theres more awareness about protecting personal data.
For such an audience, Neeva could be an attractive offering.
That’s one heck of a mixed bag.
He likes to say “Bleh.
That’s one heck of a mixed bag.
He likes to say “Bleh.”
