Lava's Xolo phones to come with 6degrees phonebook app pre-installed

Indian smartphone maker Lava has signed a deal with a Singapore startup to install an application on its Xolo brand phones. Lava would preload the 6degrees self-updating app on Xolo smartphones, opening up India's multi-million phone users market to the Singapore app.Lava has about 8 percent of the smartphone market in India and expects to sell 2.5 million Xolo phones next year."This is the first major milestone for us. Our dream is for 6degrees to be a global company and this is the first step," Niranjan Rao, co-founder of 6degrees was quoted as saying by The Straits Times.6degrees is a phonebook app that automatically updates itself whenever users or their contacts change their phone numbers or other contact information.The app is available on Android, Apple's iOS in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish.A former investment banker, Rao teamed up with engineer Arun Samudrala to create the app, which currently has about 15,000 users.Recently, 6degrees won the Singapore leg of global start-up competition Seedstars World and would represent Singapore in that grand finals to be held in February in Geneva where the winning price is $500,000 of investment fund.Its other awards including a SGD 50,000 cash grant in January from the Singapore Media Development Authority under the i.Jam start-up funding scheme which recognises innovative start-ups.PTI