Tek! - App to Connect Consumers, Retailers and Producers

Tek! app helps families shop for healthy foods, enables retailers to market products and encourage farmers to adopt prosperous agriculture.

3 Stories from India
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A Consumer, a Farmer and a Retailers

Livelihoods for more than 50% of its 1.25 billion population in India depends on agriculture and retail.

Story of Naina, 28, Homeowner, Kolkata

Naina is a 28-year-old homemaker in Kolkata. Her husband works as an accounting associate in a private firm, earning Rs. 12,000 a month. She works as a call center executive and makes Rs. 14,000 a month.

Naina or Suman purchases groceries from retail stores twice or thrice a week. They find it difficult to check or compare ingredients and prices, as reading small prints on packages isn’t just possible. She also prefers vegetables that are grown locally using fewer chemical inputs. In the last few months, Naina and Suman tried a few mobile apps to track their family spends. They couldn’t plan their purchase.

Story of Jagan, 32, Retail Shop Owner, Mumbai

After completing his graduation in a suburban college near Mumbai, Jagan migrated to Mumbai 4 years back. He opened a retail shop in a rented space.

Jagan keeps groceries, vegetables, and other consumer products in his store.  Last month, he could earn only Rs. 16,000. In comparison, Jagan was earning much higher around this time last year.

More and more, his customers in this neighborhood have started flocking to supermarkets that have sprung up everywhere. A growing inventory and discounts didn’t help to boost sales either.

Story of Varsha, 24, Farmer, Maharashtra

Varsha and her husband till their 1.5-acre land in their native village to grow paddy and vegetables. They use the paddy they produce and sell vegetables in the local market.

They spend a lot to run an electric water pump which now gets little underground water. Despite using higher quantum of water, fertilizer and other inputs, productivity is decreasing year after year.  

This winter they chose to grow tomato which fetched good price last year in this community. However, the market crashed because of oversupply.

Why We Will Need a Bold and Sustainable Solution
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Technology for a Prosperous Agriculture

Farmers’ collectives are gearing to leverage our digital platform Tek! Farm to get actionable insights into consumer demand to plan to farm.

Aggregating Demands for Retail Store

'Tek! Retail' app will help the retail shops run highly targeted and cost-effective advertising campaigns and aggregate consumer demands.

Mindful Living Among Consumers, Digitally Enabled

Mobile app - Tek! Home - enables households to schedule and plan their purchases. It helps households buy and consume healthy and eco-friendly products from online and retail shops.

Towards a Positive Impact Globally

1. An ecosystem of consumers, producers and retailers will incentivize Varsha and farmers like her adopt demand-driven agricultural practices.

2. ‘Tek! Home’ helps in aggregating daily and weekly purchase requirements for individual households, using its consumption tracker.

3. Like Naina, millions of users and their families can embrace a 'mindful living' that values sustainable consumption and production, using the ‘Tek! Home’ (app for families and their members).

A Business Model That Fits in Sharing Economy

A forever free plan for the retailers to cash on their hyper-local presence yet deliver volume-based discounts to their customers.

Leveraging New Technologies

Blockchain to give trust and traceability for the consumer products, while AI for enabling smart purchase plan and tracking consumption and food habits through users’ photos.

For the end users, Tek! is a mobile application powered by AI. For the retail store, Tek! mobile app will share the list of things to buy with retailer’s mobile app/ POS application over internet through onscreen token. Families will upload the details of consumption using photos of their food plate. Using AI, those images will be processed to quantify food, type, and calorie intake. It will also use AI to suggest comparable products in the category.

Tek! will also provide producer enterprises with blockchain enabled mobile/ web ERP to track their production.

Tek! brings together all purchase and use data in a single place for the family. The App also creates a connect among consumers, marketers, and producers of food and clothes. Similar apps in the market helps families track only their finances.

In Y1, the app will be launched in 3 cities with 200,000 to 300,000 users. By the end of year 2, we will target acquiring 8 mn users and 160,000 retail stores. By year 3, we will reach 40 mn users, 300,000 stores and 120,000 advertisers. By Y5, we will reach 80 mn users.

The primarily beneficiaries are the families living in cities in India. All the members of the family can share a common family account to share and maintain their purchases and usage details for the family.

The secondary beneficiaries are the online and offline retail shop who would be able to plan and maintain inventory based on demand and run targeted location-specific campaigns for potential customers.

Tek! for Families

You buy and use thousands of units of food, cloth and medicine every year. You have tried keeping a tab these purchases and uses but we haven’t succeeded.

Tek! mobile app makes a list for you. It starts with Tek! Planner auto-creates a list of things you need to buy based on your earlier purchases and consumption.

In Y1, the app will be launched in 3 cities with 200,000 to 300,000 users. By the end of year 2, we will target acquiring 8 mn users and 160,000 retail stores. By year 3, we will reach 40 mn users, 300,000 stores and 120,000 advertisers.

Fund raising

Marketing

Branding

Technology design and development

We have considered that the users will spend an average of 5-15 minutes daily in using Tek! app, consulting dashboard, incoming messages, advices, and product data over social media, consulting product details, and updating their data. This would also give us an opportunity to place in-app advertisements in app homepage, advice/ reminders, product data page, and email alerts.

Retailers and manufacturers use microphone, billboards, in-store announcements, pamphlets to advertise their products and offers. These methods have limited scope for personalization for the consumers’ demand, behaviour, and purchase cycles (daily, weekly, and monthly).

We intend to improve the idea through feedback and mentors from Solve community.

Limited partnerships with corporate product companies to get their product data sheet in our database. Recognition and networking through Solve would help us connecting to such corporate partners.