LocalQueue

This pandemic has amplified an already-existent digital gap between local vendors and big businesses. Because of the high cost and technical complexity involved in business-management and customer-outreach tools, small vendors cannot compete against big companies with online presence, and continue to lose business because of lack of visibility to consumers even in their own locality. Local shops and services are also unable to meet the shopping-experience expectations of consumers, and appear very inconvenient due to mismanagement and crowding. I propose to solve this problem through an integrated and simplified platform that can serve as a digital-marketplace for vendors and consumers. This will provide equal opportunities for all vendors to compete and connect to consumers, while helping them provide a better and safer customer-experience. Scaling this solution can help empower small-businesses in developing regions, where these businesses form the backbone of local-economies and provide livelihoods to an enormous number of people. 

Most small- or micro-businesses (both goods and service providers) in developing countries like India have little-to-no access to digital platforms for understanding their competitors or for connecting to potential customers. In times like COVID, over 90% of them have faced customer-related challenges and over 60% are facing losses - according to a report from Google India. For a country with more than 63 million micro-, small- and medium-scale businesses, this is a huge economic blow for a whopping 110 million people who depend on such enterprises for livelihood. However, despite this desperate need to digitize, small business owners often cannot afford currently available business-tools due to exorbitant costs and elaborate technical maintenance. These tools prove useful only to established businesses since they are vendor-specific and do not provide an integrated and convenient experience to consumers. Moreover, all of these tools operate in English and not in regional languages which vendors are comfortable with. As a result, even though they are struggling to make ends meet (and might take more than a year to revive from the pandemic), small businesses are unable to catch up and have instilled almost no digitization, something which is foundational to business growth in coming times.

LocalQueue is a discovery-based open virtual marketplace where vendors of all sizes can compete on equal footing and broadcast themselves to potential consumers. Simple enough to be used by any non-technical user with simply a smartphone, LocalQueue is over 20 times more affordable than its alternatives and is a common platform for all kinds of businesses. LocalQueue can be used in regional languages as well and makes it possible for all businesses to grow despite current adversities. Besides helping create healthy competition in the market, LocalQueue provides a much more seamless consumer experience through features like virtual queueing, in-app payment, discount coupons, and advance bookings; in order to ensure greater sales. Built on robust and scalable web-technology, LocalQueue is fully cross-platform for both consumers and vendors. LocalQueue provides an accessible queue-management tool powered by QR codes, as well as customer redressal and feedback mechanisms. By giving the option to fine-tune their product and service listings in real-time, LocalQueue allows vendors to reach nearby customers in the most effective way possible. The portal is built to work even on low-end devices and networks, and vendors can optionally also opt for targeted advertisements along with a powerful business analytics-cum-monitoring tool. 

The target population that I am working to serve consists of over 150 million small businesses in developing regions of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. These businesses have a tremendous role in running national economies and support over 300 million people worldwide. I wish to begin with India and scale to other regions at a later stage, since India itself has a gigantic number of small businesses spread throughout its geography.

The small businesses that I am targeting include retailers (grocery, milk, or vegetable shops; pharmacies; etc.) and service providers (salons, repair-works, garages, small eateries). A very large proportion of these vendors have access to smartphones and are thus can be directly benefited by LocalQueue. 

In order to gauge the demand for a tool like LocalQueue, and to understand the expectations out of such a tool, I carried out a small survey of around a hundred vendors and asked some basic questions about the problems they are facing, and the kinds of solutions they expect. Indeed, a significant proportion reported a loss in sales due to a lack of access to digital tools and due to the pandemic. I also surveyed several consumers and understood how crowding, hassle, and limited availability of options have caused a decline in sales in the local market, even though many people still believe that they can get better prices and quality for several products and services from local providers.

Based on all the data that I collected, I decided to keep discoverability at the core of LocalQueue's virtual marketplace. I made sure that the platform was simple to use, and could work in diverse situations. I also made sure that the solution does not eliminate physical shopping, but rather supplements it with digitization - a model which I call the "phygital" model. LocalQueue also ensures high standards of convenience to consumers in order to present local shops and services as approachable and lucrative options, and this helps set up a cycle of vendor-consumer interactions. The fact that all vendors are present at the same platform means that LocalQueue has the potential to set up a chain reaction where more and more vendors will be automatically incentivized to join the platform to continue competing with others. Such a healthy competition will also raise the quality of goods and services and will help vendors keep track of current trends. 

I have been working with a couple of vendors to slowly implement this in my locality. 

LocalQueue's main agenda is equitable digital inclusion through safe, affordable, and approachable tools for small businesses to thrive and grow. Digitalization is the only way to sustain in the coming decades, and small businesses need to be helped and supported in this process. In line with the challenge and the chosen dimension, LocalQueue is providing a supportive platform for small businesses to join the digital economy and create a business identity that allows them to reach out to customers more effectively and confidently. Such business and financial tools can close the digital gap and make technology more accessible for all.

LocalQueue is largely in its prototype stage and we are currently testing the software and collecting feedback. LocalQueue already has fully functional applications with almost all the planned features. There are separate portals for consumers and vendors, and web-app versions of both the portals are live at localqueue.in and vendor.localqueue.in. In addition to these, beta versions of the android apps for these portals are also available on the Google Play Store (here and here). iOS and Desktop versions of the portal are also being packaged and will be published shortly.  

We are also working out a robust business plan to scale and sustain LocalQueue over the coming years, and have decided on a subscription-based model (with an additional fee for targeted advertising) for vendors, and a freemium-model for consumers (with an additional fee for premium upsells like advanced booking and discount coupons).

There are multiple ways in which LocalQueue offers more than all current offerings combined. While the average monthly subscription to these services costs as much as $300, LocalQueue provides its offerings for just $6 a month - with no hidden costs involved. Unline other services, LocalQueue runs seamlessly on almost all software platforms and in all network conditions. While other services involve complicated mechanisms and demand at least one fully engaged individual for maintaining the platform, LocalQueue can be used by anyone easily without any technical burdens. This platform provides much more than just virtual queueing and is an integrated virtual marketplace that brings the best of both worlds together - the healthy competition and interactivity of physical markets, and the convenience and speed of digital portals. It offers a single place for consumers to view and connect with all kinds of vendors, unlike currently available solutions which create vendor-specific portals and do not contribute to the discoverability of vendors, or the freedom of choice of consumers. Moreover, this provides vendors the opportunity to operate more freely and keep experimenting with new ideas in their business. By not revolving around a single business type, LocalQueue embraces the complementary relationships present in local markets which in the long run, benefit all vendors and consumers in different ways. In this manner, LocalQueue does not displace the currently present physical markets in any way, and simply supplements them with the immense power of digitization to ensure continued growth.

LocalQueue is powered by a comprehensive frontend supported by a robust backend. In order to ensure that our website and apps work perfectly on all screens, devices, and networks, we built LocalQueue's frontend through modern cross-platform web-based technologies like Ionic and React, and extensively used APIs that could enhance functionality and interactivity. LocalQueue's website is a Progressive Web App, allowing it to function to its full potential without being downloaded to the user's device. The same codebase can also be shipped to other software platforms like Android or iOS (through Capacitor) and Windows, Linux or macOS (through Electron). LocalQueue depends on Google Firebase for backend functionality. It not only provides rapid authentication and analysis tools but also allows us to read, query, and modify data seamlessly. LocalQueue can efficiently exchange data with its server even if the user's device runs on a slow or unstable network. Firebase also provides quick access to cloud-based functions and enables us to maintain a high degree of security and user privacy. We are building a recommender system to suggest personalized options to consumers, and firebase is facilitating us through consumer data collection in a way that is efficient and also respects user privacy. Once our model is trained and tuned using Tensorflow, we will deploy it on Firebase ML and ship it with the portal. We rely on payment services like Stripe to facilitate in-app payments. Finally, through technologies like Kevel, we are building upon our optional targeted advertising platform for vendors.

Ionic with React

• Progressive Web Apps
• Capacitor
• Electron
• Firebase
• Kevel Ad Server
• Stripe
• Tensorflow

While building LocalQueue, a potential risk that we continually addressed was the lack of accountability and its repercussions for both consumers and vendors. We wanted to build a secure platform that could not be exploited by anyone to trouble or avail unfair advantage from other members of the platform. As a result, LocalQueue consists of several strategically placed checkpoints throughout the 'market' experience that it provides. The core of these checkpoints is transparency and consent. 

While LocalQueue itself can potentially facilitate substantial increases in sales and profit, we still ensure that Vendors do not use the platform to unfairly 'hoard' customers. Queues (wherever applicable) created on LocalQueue are immutable and cannot be changed without the concerned customers' consent. Queue lengths come with approximate waiting times set by the vendor, and users have real-time access to both of these metrics. Queues can be joined by customers only with the vendor's approval, and upon fulfillment, customers can be ejected from the queue only with the vendor's consent. The vendor can communicate with the consumer at several steps of the process, and at the end, the customer can provide a publicly visible rating along with feedback. 

This allows for a more accountable and transparent interaction between vendors and customers and helps inculcate healthy market practices.

LocalQueue is currently in its prototyping stage and is being tested with a couple of vendors. 

Within the next year, we plan to onboard at least 50 vendors around the city of Noida. This will allow us to directly impact the livelihood of more than 500 people whose livelihoods are connected to these businesses - this includes people who own the businesses, people who are employed by these businesses, and the families of these people.  This will also provide us coverage of over 15,000 customers per month.

Leveraging the exponential growth that we expect out of our solution, we plan to scale and enroll at least 10,000 businesses across India on our vendor portal within the next five years. Besides providing direct support to as much as 100,000 people, we will be serving over 3 million consumers through our partnered vendors.

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Mrigank has had significant experience in working on technology-driven solutions and has a rich skillset and network.

We are applying to this challenge via Solve for a variety of reasons.

• Solve can provide us with access to funds valuable for us to scale our solution.

• Solve will help us gain exposure and reach out to people with greater impact. Solve's support will help us present our solution with greater authenticity.

• Solve will allow us to learn from several other motivated and inspirational Solvers and Industry Leaders. We will also be given the opportunity to receive advice and coaching from experts in order to fine-tune our solution and improve upon it.  

• Solve will enable us to fast-track our development and establishment process through technical and legal support.