CHENNAI: You can’t call yourself a true Chennaite unless you have stood in queue at the popcorn counter at any Sathyam Cinemas outlet, waiting your turn for the delicious buttery, warm popcorn with a generous filling of seasoning. What if we said you don’t have to stand in line anymore, and can get this heavenly popcorn delivered to you wherever you want? Movie nights at home just got much better, because a Chennai-founded app, Genie, can do just that and more!
Genie delivers everything from medicines, cheques and documents, grocery, medical reports from person to person, or business to person...as long as it can be loaded on a bike, Genie’s got your back! It all started when co-founders Sreekesh Krishnan, Rakesh Mani and Parth Shah decided to create the app in 2015.
Their objective, as Rakesh quotes, was ‘to deliver the best of the city to your doorstep’. “When you think about Chennai, one of the best things that youngsters recall is the popcorn at Sathyam,” he laughs, adding that they also looked at other small Chennai cravings, like small food shops in Sowcarpet for example. “Out of all things, I think this popcorn took off really well and people just went crazy with that!”
Renowned food blogger Ekta Kothari’s first tryst with Genie was when she was out of town and had to pay her exam fees. “There was a lot of online procedure and documents printing-out to be done. Genie spent two hours in my college, but they did it all with no complaints! I will forever be grateful to them for that!” she exclaims.
From then on, she’s always used their services to complement her daily blog. “Living in Sowcarpet, not a lot of apps deliver food here. But with Genie, I can even get stuff delivered, even as far from OMR till Sowcarpet. And they always deliver in promised time. They once even delivered a craving for Welcome Hotel’s sambhar at 9.30 in the night!” says the blogger at FoodTalkChennai. “The cost of delivery is nominal compared to the amount it will take to actually go to the place.”
Each day, there are many popcorn orders, Genie claims. “At one point, Sathyam started recognising us, and helped us deliver their popcorn to our customers. When our representative goes to collect orders, they’re allowed to park so that they can move out quickly and they’re not charged for parking. The people at the counters help out because they realise and recognise what we do!” explains Rakesh, clarifying that they don’t have any written official partnership, but they both are aware of and are happy with it.
Genie has a chat-based platform where customers can order pickup-and-drop of documents, bags, their lunch/dinner from home to office and vice-versa every day. Even if you forget your charger at home, you can get it delivered at your office. Genie also caters to a whole range of business across the city, such as home bakers, apparel shops and other business to deliver their products to their customers. “We do pickup and delivery across the city of any product that can be loaded on our bike!” says Rakesh.
Shiv Shankar Ganesh, CEO of Kaching, an app that offers deals from local restaurants, recollects a time when Genie helped him ‘save’ his business! “Once we had a deal with McDonalds, and the management gave the go ahead. But we had to send the documents to all the McDonalds outlets in the city. We rang Genie up, and needed these documents to reach every McDonalds outlet; in about two hours, they ensured it all did! It was a really big deal for us!” he smiles. He uses the app for all document delivery, and finds it faster than couriers. “It’s very efficient and easy especially if you’re running a business. Couriers are usually slow. You can always count on Genie,” he says.
Genie
Corn of it!
There has been a huge increase in popcorn orders over the past month.
50-60 popcorn orders every day
Frequent time —Evening
Genie allows for the most specific requirements on seasonings too — barbeque, sour cream and onion, Mexican cheese, — how much portion you want of each, and how it should be mixed.
Timings
For now, they work from 9 am-10 pm but they will soon launch 24-hour delivery service soon.
You can download the Genie app on hellogenie.in/app