We've grown used to slipping emojis into our messages.

What looked like a simple set of smiley, frowny, teary, impatient, laughing or exasperated expressions have become part of everyday messaging.

That statistics are off the chart

There are over a 100 trillion messages sent online every year across all messaging environments.

On Google there are over 1.8 trillion searches a year.

So the messaging market is 50 times larger than search.

The overall messaging market has splintered into huge sub-groups - for everything from gaming to payments to information.

And Travis Montaque, the young CEO and co-founder of Holler had an idea.

He saw that conversational interfaces would expand far beyond text.

How could they be made more interesting?

It was a problem waiting to be solved.

Holler is a company that creates emojis, GIFs, stickers and context sensitive messaging for many players in the market

In many ways, text is limiting. It requires you to be fluent in a language.

Venmo, the payment app uses  emojis and stickers for every conceivable payment situation created by Holler.

It adds layers of interaction that goes beyond text.

And brands are already experimenting with non-verbal communication that highlights the fun quotient.

The painter of sands

His preferred tool is a rake.

The ones you sweep up dead leaves with.

And he wields it with grace and force in equal measure

His canvas - the sand on beaches.

And to complete every creation, he races against time.

Only to see them washed away by the tide in a few hours.

He records the massive undertaking with drone photography - both to document and make prints to sell.

They span areas as wide as 200 feet.

And range from geometric patterns to flowing lines and shapes.

In India, we're familiar with kolams and rangoli.

Housewives work intricate designs starting out from simple grids into complex, breathtaking detail drawn everyday.

But they span a maximum of a few feet - even the most elaborately imagined ones.

The beach artist is Andres Amador.

An environmental engineer turned computer technician who dabbled in sand during a holiday in Hawaii.

He designs on  tablets, then operates by instinct, drawing small grids and connecting them through elaborate routines.

With a growing base of customers on social media, he has attracted a small wave of enthusiasts who want to learn from him.

The art of leaving imprints on the disappearing sands of time.

A short-sighted world

How long does it take you to get your spectacles?

If you're shopping online, trying out fancy frames can take hours.

But in the real world, more than a billion people have poor vision and no money to fix the problem.

That's what Global2020 solves.

Access and the cost issue.

No optometrist required.

A sliding scale of lenses attached to a frame. It's like using binoculars. Keep turning the dial until everything comes into sharp focus.

People just look at a chart and at the point where they can see clearly, they stop

Then, they get color coded glasses for their power range inserted into the frame, and suddenly, the world comes into perfect focus. It only takes a few minutes.

The cost of the entire operation? $5. Or Rs. 375. A cup of coffee in a fancy restaurant.

The innovation was in creating the testing system that could be deployed in the field with practically no training.

And it's changing the lives of school children and adults with vision loss.

Spectacles were invented 700 years ago.

But for a whole lot of people, getting glasses is a luxury they cannot afford.

A billion people market is waiting to be tapped.

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