I n pre-COVID-19 times, a hole-in-the-wall that passes off for a convenience store at Victoria Towers, a gated community in Kazhipattur, would seldom be thronged, as it was a peripheral and hardly-exercised option for a majority of residents.
“The vendor buys groceries and vegetables based on orders placed by residents. In fact, we direct the vendor where to buy what we want. It is as micro as it can get,” explains Suresh Dhayaalan, secretary, Victoria Towers Owners Welfare Association.
Pre-ordered items would be plonked on the floor, neatly packed and ready for delivery, and a handful of residents would saunter in at various times to have theirs lugged home.
With the current situation applying the brakes on people’s movement outside, the small store found an unlikely spotlight, gaining an importance far outstripping its dimensions. Its suddenly-increased status inevitably led to what is now universally acknowledged as a hair-curling and even existential problem: Queues, short but still disturbing.
“Residents would maintain social distancing as they waited in the queue, standing sufficiently spaced apart. However, there surely was a better way of doing this thing, one free of queues,” recalls Suresh.
Around the time this issue drew the Association’s attention, a tech initiative by L&T Eden Park in Siruseri to promote social distancing came to light.
The Hindu Downtown had reported how residents of L&T Eden Park had created a web-based application just for their community to regulate shopping at its vegetable and grocery stores, making it as contact-less as possible. Significantly, that initiative did away with queues.
Suresh explains that connecting with Senthil Kumar Vaithiyanathan and Selvaraj Varadharajan, two residents of L&T Eden Park who had designed the web app for their community, the need at Victoria Towers was made known. The tech hack required quite a degree of customisation.
“The stores at Eden Park had a ready stock for residents to choose from. At Victoria Towers, residents would decide what the convenience store would stock. So, we made a clone of the original web app and configured it to address situations unique to this gated community. The vendor needed a consolidated list of orders. Residents would key in the items in English. For the vendor’s benefit, a provision had to be made for him to read it in Tamil,” explains Senthil. “Everything is offered as a sub-domain meant only for Victoria Towers — it is an entirely free app meant to just help residents. We call it NammaFriend.”
“The application instance is offered free of cost by NammaFriend for the RWA and follows all data privacy and security guidelines,” says Suresh.
Suresh underlines the fact that the vendor was extremely receptive to the idea of operating via an app, though he was totally unaccustomed to engaging with technology in this manner. “He runs the store with his family’s help. He is not tech-savvy, but his daughter is. We conducted a training programme. She trained him on how to use the app,” elaborates Suresh.
Both Suresh and Senthil believe apps of this kind should be flexible and continually built to address evolving situations.
“We tried something outside of the regular mode, we asked them to put in Kabasura Kudineer packet for those placing an order, and its cost would be borne by the Association,” says Suresh.
Soon, Suresh wants this app to promote not just social distancing, but also sustain local businesses and support farmers, an idea that readily resonates with Senthil and Selvaraj.
“The plan is to expand the scope of the app to bring all the small-scale vendors into it — water suppliers, milk vendors and others. Besides, we want it to enable direct procurement of farm products from the farmers, doing away with the middlemen so that farmers are benefitted. It is in the preliminary stage, and the idea is under consideration by the committee,” elaborates Suresh.
Straight from the farms
“As part of the next step with the app, we would be moving towards a direct farm procurement model that would help farmers, and also out in-house vendor who can take care of the distribution,” says Suresh.
“If we know a farmer is selling groundnuts, we could aggregate requests from residents, and once the aggregate order reaches 200 kg, notifications would be sent. There will be transport costs which would be spread, when the local vendor distributes it to the residents. The app will make everything transparent. How much the farmer sells the groundnuts for; and the what the vendor sells it to residents for,” details Senthil.
Deliver till availability
During these times, it is a challenge for the local vendor to purchase all the items residents have ordered at one go, as availability is a major issue.
“A feature aimed at tackling a problem arising out of this situation was going to be introduced before the June 19 lockdown came into effect, but we're introducing it soon. If a resident has ordered 15 items, and the vendor could procure only 5, the rest would be carried over to the next day. If still not procured, it would get pushed by one more day, and so on, till the order is met in its entirely. The resident doesn’t have to raise an additional order for the items left out.”
