Chhat

A mobile app that provides homeless people with relevant information on resources, such as homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and healthcare facilities.

It is estimated that over 150 million people are homeless worldwide and Habitat for Humanity estimates that over 1.6 billion people around the world live in what would be deemed "inadequate shelter.” 

India is estimated to be home to over 78 million people with “inadequate shelter” – a population that is greater than that of the United Kingdom. It is also estimated that more than three million men and women are homeless in India’s capital city of New Delhi, a number roughly the same population of Croatia. The numbers of homeless people are substantial, and these people deserve some basic level of human dignity and respect. While there is a global issue of homelessness, our current focus is on the homeless population in New Delhi, India. 

While there are substantial numbers of homeless in New Delhi, the sad irony is that many of them are unaware of the resources available to them. There are homeless shelters and soup kitchens across the city. Thousands of religious places like mosques, churches, gurudwaras, and temples are willing to provide basic but safe night accommodation to these homeless people. There are several hundred soup kitchens and charitable houses that serve and feed the poor. Yet there remains significant information asymmetry. 

We are addressing and solving the problem of information access for the homeless. While looking for a home at night, our app Chhat would be their home online – one destination for all the information they need from accessing a safe shelter for the night to getting a hot meal and medical care when necessary. Chhat in Hindi means “roof.”

Chhat will address the market mismatch between demand for and supply of resources, which is due to the simple reason of a lack of easy access to information. Our research shows that almost all homeless people in New Delhi have a basic Android based smartphone. A vast majority of those people do engage in some basic economic activity to earn enough money to either support families in their villages or to afford basic food for themselves. But they are unable to afford proper housing because of affordability, lack of documentation or other reasons. 

While many homeless people spend their nights under the sky in the bitter cold of winter, with the menace of the monsoon rains, or during the horrible heat of the summer months, the reality is that some shelters remain unfilled while others have to turn back the homeless to avoid overcrowding. 

This problem can easily be solved with an app that brings all the relevant information in one place for the homeless to access and benefit from. At the same time, homeless shelters, charities, and government agencies would also benefit from being able to communicate and connect with their targeted audience, whether to disseminate information or disburse in-kind benefits. The primary stakeholders of our app are the homeless; but the secondary stakeholders are charities and social welfare departments of the government. All these stakeholders stand to benefit greatly from our app.

Our proposed solution is a mobile app – Chhat – that connects homeless people to the relevant resources available but unknown to them; from homeless shelters and religious institutions such as mosques, gurudwaras, temples, and churches that provide a safe place to sleep at night; to soup kitchens and free healthcare clinics that provide free food and medical care. Our app is a one-stop destination for all homeless people to meet their basic needs for survival. 

There currently exists a massive information asymmetry wherein millions of homeless people go to sleep under the elements at night while many homeless shelters and other places of free lodging remain unfilled. Some homeless shelters cannot accommodate their excessive demands while others remain empty. Many non-profit organizations and even individuals are looking to either feed, clothe, or provide shelter for homeless people but are unable to get their information out to the intended people in a cost-effective way to be useful. Sadly, there is a significant problem with both access and disbursement – the homeless are unable to access and the providers are unable to disburse their intended services. 

Almost all homeless people, across New Delhi at least, own, and confidently operate at least a basic Android-based smartphone that can support mobile apps. Our mobile app will address and solve this information asymmetry that currently remains unaddressed. 

Our vision is to build a “Booking.com” like application for the homeless people – starting with geospatially curated, relevant, real-time information on free beds, food, and medical care, expanding later to transactional features like booking a bed and even directly receiving disbursements from government and charitable organizations in the future. We intend to become the last feet connectivity for all homeless people in the future.

We have spent several months on the ground in India during the summer of 2022; understanding and researching the problem of homelessness first hand, with a specific focus on New Delhi. The stench of rotting blankets, rat litter, and woodsmoke as we entered the subdued gate of the rain basera in Delhi's Sarai Kale Khan area will never leave our memories (in Hindi, ‘rain basera’ literally translates into ‘night shelter’ - a refuge for the night). We have designed a low-cost, foldable, self-financed billboard/home solution that we are currently working on, with the next step goal of pilot deployment in New Delhi. 

Building on our experiences, our proposed mobile application will serve the same community of homeless people across the world, with a specific focus on India and New Delhi first. Our solution will bring relevant, geo-spatially filtered, real time information to the homeless people so that they can have easy and quick access to resources, such as a bed, food, and medical attention whenever needed. This community is currently left out of the digital revolution and this information is easily and readily available, but inaccessible by the people who need it the most. The homeless people are our primary target users. They deserve the dignity of a bed at night and a warm meal during the day. The information asymmetry that exists in the market deprives them of the very basic of human needs despite the availability of significant resources and facilities dedicated to their welfare. With access to relevant and useful information, the homeless people will be able to receive the benefits available to them. At the same time, there is a problem with disbursement and distribution too. Social welfare benefits often remain undisbursed only because of the absence of data and proper disbursement mechanisms. Our secondary target audience are these social welfare programs and charitable/philanthropic organizations that are looking to disburse their benefits and services to the homeless people.

We are ideally placed to deliver the solution because we have been studying the problem of homelessness in New Delhi for well over a year now. In particular, last summer, we spent two months in New Delhi interacting and speaking with countless homeless people across New Delhi with a view of understanding their lives and problems better. Part of our time was on our research towards developing low-cost and foldable shelter for the homeless in New Delhi, India. We have since designed and developed a scaled down prototype of the shelter and next steps are to present it to the government of New Delhi for a pilot project. 

We also have adequate knowledge and experience in computer programming and mobile app development, technology, and 3-D design, and we fully expect to continue to interacting with the homeless as we pilot our housing solution in New Delhi, India in parallel to the app development. We have also consulted with various stakeholders who are keenly interested in solving the problems of the homeless in New Delhi. The app we propose to develop is a natural outgrowth of that experience and will build on our work and experiences to date.

We spent the summer of 2022 extensively involved with the homeless in New Delhi, India. Not only have we researched the subject online and read endless research pieces on the subject, last summer, we effectively embedded ourselves in the issue by firsthand seeing, understanding, and studying the lives of homeless people in India. With effort and reassurances, we were able to find two homeless men who agreed to be interviewed about their conditions; and we spent weeks interviewing them and learning about their problems intimately well. 

In particular, we studied the lives of two homeless young men in New Delhi - their names were Adesh and Dheeraj, two cousins who hailed from the city of Agra, located 150 miles to the east of Delhi, where the famous Taj Mahal is located. They both left their families in Agra behind to earn a livelihood in Delhi. They both worked as driving instructors during the early mornings and late evenings, while Adesh additionally worked as a personal chauffeur for a wealthier citizen in the city during the day. Despite making what could be considered a respectable salary, especially by Indian standards, they both found themselves struggling and unable to afford basic housing in New Delhi; thus, they ended up living and sleeping on lane dividers in the streets of New Delhi.

We have spent time with them and other homeless people, understanding the issues, and we understand the neglect and pain they face. Published articles also illustrated the depth of the problems faced by the homeless, and our app addresses the information asymmetry problem. Our deep dive, hands-on research has convinced us that there is an urgent gap in the market; there is a real need for a solution like the one we have proposed, and the targeted audience of users will benefit immensely from a solution like we have proposed.

Homelessness is at the core of multiple societal afflictions and leads to significant and unnecessary human suffering. From homelessness arises such broad societal afflictions such as disease, illiteracy, and even crime like child and human trafficking. By targeting the core issue of homelessness, one can have significant and profound impact on health, education, dignity, economic prosperity, and also provide hope for a better future. We believe that hope springs from a home!

It is indeed remarkable that despite the existence of billions of mobile apps, there currently exists none that we know of that addresses the needs of this huge and global community of homeless people. 

Our solution is quite simple at the surface. It simply brings information that already exists but is difficult to access and reach by its intended beneficiaries in a simple to use mobile app. While the premise is simple, the impact it will have is profound. Currently, the homeless community is completely left out of the digital world by way of accessing information that is beneficial or helpful to them. And we plan on doing just that. 

Our core innovation is in identifying and building a solution stack for a community that is otherwise ignored by mainstream technology solutions. If one core ambition of technology is to improve lives, there is no community in greater need than the homeless. By addressing the primary problem of a roof over one’s head, we believe our innovative approach to solving the problem of information asymmetry and access will also improve access to education, health, sustenance and also help alleviate the conditions leading to crime.

We expect to have an immediate impact on the homeless population as soon as the app is live. In particular, our primary short-term goals for the next year are primarily:

1. To launch the mobile app with information on homeless shelters, soup kitchens, health facilities and more.
2. To pilot program in New Delhi, acquire 70,000-100,000 users, and demonstrably prove the value proposition and usage.

Our longer-term goals for the first five years post launch are:

1. Increase feature functionality to include reserving beds for the night.
2. Disbursement of donations and gifts from individuals and philanthropic organizations through our application.
3. Increase usage to reach at least 10 million homeless people across India.
4. Expand globally

Our solution is completely powered and enabled by existing technologies. Chhat, our mobile application will be built for Android-based smartphones, using and applying multiple existing technologies.

1. Public cloud infrastructure provided by AWS (Amazon Web Services) will be the backbone of our solution.
2. Android operating system and Android SDK (Software Development Kit) including its various tools and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to create the actual app. Some of the intended tools are visual layout editor, debugger, and software emulator.
3. The app will be written using the Ionic framework.
4. Geospatial location will be sourced from Google Maps and various mobile service providers.
5. The databases for the service providers and charitable organizations will be stored using Mongo databases.

We are currently in the design phase of building our mobile app. We expect to pilot our app in New Delhi, India, in the summer of 2023. In the first-year post launch of our app, we hope to serve over 100,000 homeless people in the city of New Delhi.

While our project is not a complex undertaking either technically or otherwise, we do foresee facing multiple technical, financial, and adoption challenges.

• As a young team with limited exposure to experienced managers and tech-mentors, we need help in building a robust technology platform.
• To deliver our product, and build in relevant data sources and information, we need to be able to add 2-3 highly skilled, motivated, and talented developers. 
• Our biggest challenge will be to get our word out to the community via certain incentives. Acquisition of users, no matter how relevant and helpful the content, is at the core of our product’s success.

For the next five years, our biggest challenge will be in raising capital and sustaining our product offering:

• We are addressing homeless people and we do not expect them to pay for the information or services. We will depend on philanthropists and organizations who want to serve the homeless to support us both financially as well as in providing access to service providers for partnerships.
• Marketing – no matter how valuable our solution, we must be able to reach the intended end user. And therein comes the need for marketing and promotion of our app, both for homeless people to be aware of and to use the app, and for suppliers of philanthropy and charity to post and update their services and benefits targeting the homeless people.

India is not one homogenous country – different regions speak different languages. Hindi will only work in northern India. In southern India, we will have to localize our app to languages such as Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. For east India, our app will have to be in Bengali, Odiya, and Assamese. For west India, we will have to deploy our app in Gujarati, Rajasthani, and Marathi. In short, our app will have to multi-lingual.

We are planning to overcome these barriers by:

1. We are addressing the technical product development challenges by seeking out and working with pro bono developers in India, and also by doing some of the programming ourselves.
2. For distribution, we plan to partner with various NGOs and charities who are independently serving the homeless people in their own communities.
3. The homeless people do not read print media or consume traditional media sources. Reaching them poses unique challenges. We hope to be able address these go-to-market challenges by partnering with governmental and charitable organizations.
4. To solve for marketing and operating expenses, we shall engage with various CSR funds and social investors and intend to showcase our product for investment or grants.
5. The problem we are addressing has significant social and societal impact and the need is real and urgent.

Indian Council for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR), and their CEO & Founder, Dr. Rajesh Tiwari has been mentoring us. He could be instrumental in introducing us to CSR grants and sponsorships when the app is ready and tested for go to market.

We aim to be a non-profit organization for the benefit of the homeless and inadequately homed communities. However, our goal is to be able to independently sustain our operations and growth:

1. Ad sales through our mobile app 
2. Commissions on charity and gifting on the platform
3. Grants and sponsorships via CSR programs and partnerships

With scale and a community of users, we believe our app will be able to achieve financial viability and sustainability. Our app is designed to bring social welfare and good. That social return cannot be measured by any financial ratio. 

We believe the community of homeless people are still consumers. Despite the homeless population being at the very bottom of the economic and social pyramid, there are charities, religious organizations, and governments who do want to reach out to them, and we would be the ideal portal to do so.

 Hence, with a large enough community of users, our app should be able to achieve financial sustainability within 3-4 years. Our revenue streams include ads, as well as grants and subscriptions from government social welfare departments and charitable organizations.

With scale, there are multiple revenue streams that could be available for an app like Chhat.