A clutch of top executives from startups have built a web-based app CovidMaps to help find information about stores in one’s neighbourhood to buy essentials.
CovidMaps.in, a volunteer-led nonprofit project, lists details around when a store is open, what items are available and how much, safety precautions being observed, crowding, wait times to help people get their essentials in a safe way. This data is crowdsourced and updated on a real-time basis by users.
“While normally one would rely on Google Maps, or their own knowledge, both solutions aren’t as effective in these times as the status quo has changed with stores operating in a different time window and the stock availability having fluctuations. People are also concerned about safety precautions at stores as well as crowding,” said Sanjeev Rao, co-founder at CovidMaps.
The company hit about 2,000 users within two days of the launch and it currently has information of over 100 stores in two cities. “We also see 30% of our daily traffic is repeat users and they are contributing to help each other in a big way,” said Phani Kishan, a member of the nonprofit’s core team.
The service is currently available in Vancouver and Bengaluru as most of its volunteers are from these two cities.
“CovidMaps is a platform that has global applicability. Whether in Vancouver or in Bangalore we are observing similar behaviour from users. There is also a strong social responsibility being displayed by users who are promoting the web page on their own to friends, family and office groups,” Arjun Attam, CovidMaps’ core team member, said.
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