Three students from Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT-Delhi) Rohan Rajpal (CSE 4th year) — Srijan Jain (CSD 3rd year) and Royal Tomar, (CSD 4th year) — have won HackInOut 7.0, the biggest community hackathon in India. They were awarded for their mobile app SevaShop, that helps service-based businesses set up an online shop in 15 seconds.
The three participated in the contest as Team Growmore, and were able to raise Rs 1 lakh through a quadratic funding model which was introduced for the first time in the hackathon. SevaShop helps businesses like salons, spas, car workshops, fitness centres, etc set up an online shop in a quick and hassle-free way. The app is already on Google Play Store. “At the moment, it is in the alpha testing stage and we have 30 real customers. Based on the feedback we get we will improve it further,” says Jain, adding that the target is to have 500 customers in the next six months.
Incepted in 2015, HackInOut, a community hackathon, is a platform where leaders and leaners in technology collaborate to build tools that help ease life. The program, organised online this time due to Covid-19 restrictions, received over 6,000 applications from all over the world, out of which, 141 teams were selected to participate. The idea to deve lop SevaShop, says Jain, started after the pandemic hit and they saw how the service industry was getting affected. “My parents have a CA firm, while Rohan’s family has a car workshop, and both their businesses were affected due to lockdown.
So, we thought of building a solution around it,” he says. Delving a little more into the issue, they realised there was a burning need for such a solution. So, the three did an entrepreneurial course at the college and developed a business idea around it. Talking about the challenges they faced while developing the app, Tomar says, “The road ahead was tough since web development was something none of us had done before. Finding the right technology and tutorials was quite a task. But, we stayed firm to our purpose and persevered, and took everything in our stride.
And, our efforts have paid off. We now want to take this app to broader audiences.” Adds Jain, “The biggest challenge was to get real customers onboard. We began with my barber in Saket. Now, of course, we have figured out what exactly our customers want and we can get their business online in 15 seconds.” Rajpal claims their app is better than aggregators, saying, “As of now, the easiest way for services to go online is to enlist themselves on an aggregator, but this destroys the business’s brand and also reduces its margins. SevaShop addresses this issue and makes it easier for service-based businesses to find customers and vice-versa.” SevaShop has several benefits for both, customers and businesses.
“For businessowners the biggest advantage is that it is a fast way of creating an online store, 15 seconds is all it takes to do so. Further, it helps maintain a customer database and get detailed analytics to understand customers, which in turn helps business grow,” says Rajpal, adding that through SevaShop, a business owner can also share his service catalogue on WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal, to widen its reach. He will also get readymade promotions and graphics to share on social media platforms. As for customers, they can easily book services without downloading any app, scan QR code at the shop to visit the shop website. Also, the multiple online payment options that SevaShop offers is beneficial for both customers and businesses.