Fasten Your Seatbelt, BOX BOX, a Mobile App is Here to Meet Your F1 Fandom

• ByStartupStory     |    December 30, 2022

“I would definitely encourage readers and young entrepreneurs to stop making excuses, to give their 100 percent and to follow their true passion.” – Ranjith Ramanan, Co Founder of Box Box in an exclusive interview with Startup Story.

Founder’s journey

Ranjith Ramanan and Kamal Kumar Lakshmanan, the founders, are product designer and engineer by degree, as well as Formula 1 fans at heart. Both of them were living fulfilling lives, with Ranjith having worked for over 14 years and his multidisciplinary skills collaborating with a variety of brands. Kamal, on the other hand, is a technology enthusiast with over 9 years of experience as a lead iOS developer.

It All Started with a Tweet

Ranjith finally created a Formula One iOS widget concept and reached out to the engineering community on Twitter for implementation of the concept. There he met Kamal Kumar, the most suitable person with whom he could begin the journey of developing the Box Box club. He responded to the tweet, and they carried the passion forward, after a series of brainstorming the events.

Accelerating the idea 

Ranjith accelerated the concept right after he watched the Formula One race in March 2022. Both the founders raced through the tracks of multiple designs, layouts, and iterations before launching the final product. 

With a mission of following their true passion and giving back to the racing community the two founders launched The Box Box application on 6th May, 2022- right before the Miami Grand Prix. They geared up to cater the needs of every F1 fan.

With their user-friendly widgets, you can have every racing update at your fingertips. But that’s not all, their app also offers a race calendar, a race countdown timer, and the ability to track your favorite driver and constructor. Plus, they even included widgets featuring past world champions to decorate your home screen. 

At the very beginning they realized the true need of a box box club. Initially the idea was to give everything for free. With huge success in the first few months, they understood there are lots of users who want to keep up with the application.

A Team of Experts

The founders collaborate with 20+ creators/influencers from around the world, including creators from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Australia and so on, to provide best-in-class service to F1 fans.

Strong Customer Base is the Key to Success

The application is currently used by half a million fans from 175 countries all over the world. European countries such as Spain, the Netherlands, then Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States have the most active users.

Users often asked the founders on social media platforms if they can get multiple features on the product. Ranjith stated that this is when we decided to take a step further in order to provide a much better version of the product than the current one.

Growth and Development plans 

Growth is necessary for survival in life. They began as a widget-only app with initial personalization options to track ‘Favorite Driver,’ ‘Favorite Constructor,’ and ‘Race Schedule’. Users could track all information in their local time zones and three languages back then.

Box Box has now evolved into a full-fledged app, with more personalized options such as Formula 1 News, Race Countdown, World Drivers and Constructors’ Championship widgets. Users can now set their time zone preferences to 12/24H format, change the app’s theme, and update their language preferences to one of the six languages they support: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Dutch.

They didn’t stop there. You can now use your wrist to access their widgets. WatchOS 9’s WidgetKit support allowed them to quickly begin support for Watch Face Complications. Their watch app also runs on watchOS 8, so they can support users who have older Apple Watches, such as the Series 3.

Furthermore, they create and share their own watch faces with users as it has been the most popular and requested on their social media channels. Their first year has taught them a lot, and they are gearing up and going full throttle for the 2023 Formula 1 season. The founders are even working with other companies to gain access to live-streaming services through their Box Box application starting next year.

To become the best Formula 1 fan app ever, they are focusing more on the community and what the users want. Box Box’s brand-new dashboard concept for 2023 will be unique. In Fact in the coming year the founders will be collaborating with Apple to gear up experience for the users. It will compel users to open the app in order to keep up with the Formula One world and expand their fandom. The app will be more personalized, with all relevant information at the user’s fingertips. 

Feedback and Recognition

The Formula 1 community is large and very supportive, and it is because of their support that Box Box has become the best Formula 1 app for fans. Even before the launch, the founders were actively listening to user feedback and updating the app with different versions to improve the product.

“Kamal and I personally connect with users whenever possible via Twitter, Email, Instagram, and sometimes even Whatsapp,” Ranjith said. The goal here is to understand the problem and get feedback from the root level so that we can solve it and incorporate it into future versions.” He went on to say that his co-founder is even learning Spanish in order to better understand the needs of the Spanish population.

The founders doubled their user base in two days and were noticed by a couple of top Formula One teams, including Mercedes AMG Petronas, Aston Martin, and Haas F1 Team, among others.

Mercedes Formula 1 Team started a tweet asking users to share their Lock screen with Box Box widgets, which led to users sharing their lock screens loaded with Box Box widgets. As a result, the app started trending #1 in about 20 countries on the AppStore. Other Formula One teams, such as Aston Martin and Haas, used the app’s widgets to create their own Lock screens, which they shared on their official TikTok accounts.

Advice for youngsters

“I would strongly advise everyone to pursue their true passion. You can make as many excuses as you want for not being able to work, but let me tell you that if you put your heart and soul into something, the results will never be disappointing.” – Ranjith Ramanan.

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