Ever wondered where you can find some of the best street food in your area? Or maybe something that promises good taste and hygiene — after all, nobody wants to end up with an infection after a binge session. This is where Find a Kadai steps in. Winner of the Chennai Apps Contest, the city-specific app lets users find interesting tuck shops in their area — hidden gems that they wouldn’t otherwise know about.
Developed by four entrepreneurs — Rajoshi Ghosh, Karthik Venkateswaran, Walter Benjamin and Sarath Kumar — the app is crowdsourced and lets users add information about the places they feel offer the best street food. “The idea came about when we were heading out to grab a bite, and were looking for something quick, tasty and affordable. Hygiene was also an important factor. But we couldn’t think of any other place apart from our usual haunts. We looked online for suggestions, and realised that there was very little on the Internet about street food options in Chennai. So we asked around a bit and stumbled upon this little store that sells the most delicious sandwiches. It was a great find and just what we needed. This set the ball rolling, and we decided to develop an app that allows users to find a list of street food vendors,” says Karthik.
Rajoshi adds, “Since it is a crowdsourced app, users can themselves add other little-known places and expand the data base. After all, food is personal to people and it is only fair then that we have it that way.”
The group also hopes that the app will not just increase the popularity of tuck shops, but also encourage the owners to up the ante and improve hygiene standards. “Hygiene is an important factor, and places listed on the app will specify the conditions at a particular street food stall,” says Rajoshi.
Incidentally, all four developers work with a web app company, but Find a Kadai is a result of their passion to create something independently. “We fortunately had a decent sample size in our office, and we used them to model our app on. At present, the beta version of the app is available, and we should be rolling out the app by this month end for Android. We are simultaneously working on the iOS version as well, and that should be released by next month,” she adds.
