KOCHI: Ever thought of ordering food, booking a salon appointment, keeping a tab on your kid’s playschool, getting updated on church activities – all of this using a single platform? And what if you don’t have to worry about shrinking memory space downloading an array of confusing apps? City-based couple Ashwin and Bavani have come with Swapp, a mobile app that connects the user with a range of services. “Swapp is a platform which allows users to access multiple business verticals. You can actually cherry-pick the things you want from the multiple options,” says Ashwin Panicker, one of the founders.
He adds his initial idea was to create a platform for medical records.“I started thinking about it soon after I lost my mother to cancer. It came as a surprise as despite having many doctors in the family we diagnosed it very late. On hindsight we realised that there were symptoms, but nobody connected the dots. So that set me thinking about integrating medical records. If I consult a doctor for a standalone illness today and go to another for something else three months later, there is no system to link the two medical reports. We both quit our jobs to work on it six years back, but later realised it was way too bigger. We then moved on to another idea and ended up with Swapp,” he says.According to studies, majority of apps are deleted within 90 days of installation, mainly because of lack of engagement.
“The USP of Swapp is the way it integrates multiple verticals. It’s almost like a web browser, you want to go to a particular site you click on the browser first,” he says. If you are a member of Trivandrum Women’s Club you can see the app of the club through Swapp and interact with it. “If your child goes to a school and the school has an app you can monitor all activities through your phone. You don’t need to download specific apps if you have Swaap as it enables you to access multiple points through the same digital platform. So you don’t have to download the school app, salon app, dentist app and yoga club app separately,” adds Bavani.
And when it comes to businesses Swapp has a different dimension altogether. “It’s where it gets very interesting. We all know that the world is going e-commerce way and the quantity of transactions happening in your mobile is higher when compared to laptop these days. So it’s very important for businesses to have some sort of a digital interface with their customer,” says Ashwin.
Small businesses and organizations can create their own mobile app in minutes using the ready to use templates of Swapp. The app offers templates for food, retail, organisations, schools, churches, tuition centres, clinics and more. In short it enables small businesses, who can’t afford to develop their own mobile apps, to create one and host it through Swapp.
“There was this woman who used to sell fish in my neighbourhood in Ulloor and when she died her daughter took over the business. This has been their livelihood for generations and her market is limited to around 60 houses in that area. But now such persons are being threatened by biggies like Daily Fish. The first reason she is losing market is convenience and she is in no position to fight such giants. But if she has some kind of digital interface informing her customers what time she is going to come, what her catch is and what the prices are, she can stay in business. What we do is we create an app for her and host it through Swapp. All you need is to create an account and ask your customers to download Swapp,” he says.
Swapp, launched in August, already has a bunch of businesses in the city operating through them. We have schools, churches, clubs and some other services and the pool is widening. But right now our focus is more on food as demand is very high in that area,” he says. Swapp is a free-to- download mobile app on both iOS and Android platforms, for end users. For businesses, it provides a web based application to help them manage their own apps hosted on Swapp.