OneKartGlobal - A Marketplace for Neighbourhood

Support the Informal sector of people by making use of their products and services, and to benefit people in need of their daily essentials; where both the groups can be mutually benefitted.

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Inspiration

The Novel Corona Virus has infected more than 2 Million people in more than 150 countries, a scourge confronting all of our economies, lifestyle, health and common well- being. The economic situation has now been aggravated by the variation in demand, supply and liquidity shocks . While we are focusing on securing the population from health hazards and on providing the reliefs, we also need to think of longterm solutions - to secure the health of the economy, the viability of the businesses , especially common man's lively hood, and there is an urgent need to mobilise resources to stimulate the economy.

The problem we help solving

More than 60 per cent of the world's employed population are in the informal economy. A new ILO report shows that 2 billion people work informally, most of them in emerging and developing countries. Apart from people who are with government services, IT/IT enabled services, monthly waged employees etc, people who belongs to informal economy are farmers, small scale business men, skilled labourers, unskilled labourers etc. who are very much impacted as they do not get opportunities for their daily expected income to meet their end-to end needs.

It should be ensured that the workers in its informal economy as well as small business owners have sufficient cash flow during the Covid19 impacted period. Measures should be taken to support those who'd be most affected by the impact, so that they would have some form of cash flow in order to survive. Our inspiration for bringing forth this idea is to provide a platform where people belonging to informal economy could provide their services, products, manpower, skillsets etc for keeping balance of their economic situation and thereby the consumers will also get benefitted.

What it does? The solution we bring to the table.

Our solution brings a radical change in the society and improves the economy of common man in our neighbourhood with the smart use of existing technologies and concepts.

Our innovative solution “OneKartGlobal - A Marketplace for Neighbourhood” brings forth a platform for the informal sector to overcome the current economic crisis, and benefit the lifestyle by utilising their commodities, skillsets, manpower and so on. Our ingenious application provides equal importance to the suffering of common man as well, who are unable to reach daily-commodities, supplies and essential services which are out of their reach in this crisis condition, mostly in areas where big enterprises and online deliveries are not well established.Our platform bridges the gap between supply chain and consumers; both the pain areas are addressed in a common platform!

Through our digital platform model, we are aiming to support the category of people working on informal sector, and the casual labourer's by making use of their services and products to the benefit of the other part of the society , say the common man who are in utmost need of their daily essentials, where-in both the group's can be mutually benefitted. This includes goods as well as services and manpower. The idea is developed aiming the global commodity searches, which can be best filtered for local and neighbourhood solutions.

Problems addressed :

  1. Individuals/Small scale businesses are not able to sell their products, and on the other hand common man is struggling to get their daily essentials, mostly in rural areas where big enterprises and online deliveries are not well established. Our solution here addresses both these problems in a common platform i.e, Bridge the gap between supply chain and consumers.
  2. Increasing the demand of local goods and services by advertising in our portal.
  3. Apart from the day-today essentials, the services offered are;
  • Daily labourers to support farming - Contractors could register to send daily labourers where in users can request for services by keeping social distancing norms
  • Contractors/Agents who could act as intermediary between farmers/users for daily labourer services
  • Essential supportive services - Electricians/Plumbers/House maintenance services
  • Small scale/Homely Food services - Users could register and pre-order the requirement. This helps the small scale business as well as users in meeting their needs
  • Small scale Bakery services - Home Bakers
  • Registered Nursing services - For taking care of old/bed ridden patients/their basic necessities say blood test samples etc
  • People could also register as 'Delivery guys' , who can meet their needs with the delivery charges
  • Drivers- Taxi services for any urgency calls
  • Agents/ Intermediaries to support Farmers who are ignorant with online systems who could share profit with agreed terms
  • Tailors- for any personal tailoring classes as people might be interested in their free time, and this helps tailors for their income
  • Hair Dressers

How we stand unique among other e-commerce and Marketplace sites available in market are;

  • We offer an "across-the-board" solution under a single umbrella.

Already there are big brand sites for selling products and Service provider websites which provides individual services say; Electricians and Plumbers, Building Maintenance, Health Services etc. But we stands apart as we bring together all these under a single portfolio where each local locality and neighbourhood areas could reach the services within their locality.

  • The marketplace ensures the potential of more accountability as the focus is more on neighbourhood utilities.

  • More trustworthy deals with local community sellers and service providers as they are ease of reach for dealing with any after service or after sale dealings

  • Even a home maker can sell their home made products directly through our site with a good reach of consumers rather than starting with their own websites, facebook pages, instagram pages etc where the reach is limited to only their circle.

  • Also during our research phase of the project we have come across a fact that there are a number of Differently-abled people in each locality and they are engaged in making handmade products like umbrellas, Art items, Bakery items etc and they are struggling to find a market for their products. Mostly they end up in selling it via intermediaries where they charge a good part of the profit as commission, and the profit which reaches the producer is significantly low. Our market place is a solution for them as well, as the neighbourhood sales helps them and they could find market and bulk orders or subscriptions as a supportive aid for their well being.

  • We offer classifieds facility where customers can post their requirements and advertise their offerings.

How we built it

We came to know about this event couple of days back through our organisation and decided to pitch in as a team. Together we studied and discussed how our website should look like and then split ourselves into smaller groups where one group designed the feasibility of using AWS and Angular to develop the application and the other team developed the prototype as part of the opening game. The architecture diagram, Business canvas model and the prototype are attached here and we can further build on it.

Challenges we ran into

  • Coordinating with people from different locations
  • Different laws and legal requirements across regions on providing the services
  • How to verify the authenticity of registration of providers, (which can be later accomplished by connecting to central databases)

Accomplishments that we are proud of

  • Team work - We were able to align our skills, enhance collaboration, flourishment of ideas, delegation of responsibilities and bringing together diverse talents to achieve a shared goal faster

  • Proud of providing a real and appropriate solution for the benefit of the society, by proper understanding and wider research of current scenario to support the society and common man on their utmost need, rather than just a participation in the normal kind of Hackathon events.

What we learned

  • Gained knowledge on a completely new area of formal and informal economy by the research studies as part of the idea, otherwise it was a grey area for most of the team members.

  • Utilised the opportunity to learn new toolsets for implementation.

What's next for OneKartGlobal - A Marketplace for Neighbourhood

  • Mobile App development
  • Additional Payment Options
  • Legal Verifications
  • Improved Quality checks
  • Chatbot Service
  • Regionalised Disclaimers
  • Security and Tracking
  • Notifications for producers or suppliers to deal with classifieds in the site or user queries
  • Add Big data solution to analyse the stats and cater market demands in advance
  • Implementing AI and CRM solutions to understand the customer needs and offer special discount (campaigns etc).
  • Adding Blockchain to record the transactions

What we have done during this Hackathon

As we came to know about this only a couple of days before through our organisation, we dint got much time for working on it. We pitched in as a single team, first we all sat together and did brain storming for hours and discussed on different ideas and finally came to a conclusion on supporting common man who are impacted very much during this crisis. So again we did brainstorming to conclude on formalising an idea on what exactly we should focus on. Then we split to form small teams on doing market studies and research, contacted small scale sellers, farmers, skilled and unskilled labours over phone, discussed their pain areas . Based on all these, we finalised on converting our idea to our project.

So, in this Hackathon the main areas we worked are;

  • Did loads of brainstorming
  • Problem analysis and brainstorming
  • Research on the present market conditions and collected data from neighbourhood localities
  • Studied problem - solution fit
  • Studied product - market fit
  • Developed networks with other teams
  • Set targets for the MVP
  • Designed the prototype - MVP
  • Built the prototype with screens, covering the functionalities
  • Formed a feasible technical architecture diagram
  • Developed a Business Canvas Model
  • Worked on the Textual pitch
  • Regular discussion with Mentor to identify any areas of improvement
  • Prepared the Video - With actual facts from across the globe and our prototype

The solution's impact to the crisis

  • Helps local business reach you, so they can survive, and you can stay home, stay safe and stay connected.
  • Easy yet powerful tool to cope up with the present conditions so that we develop some form of cash flow in the neighbourhood for existence.

*The main impact which we bring forth is - creating a central, easy to use and flexible application that can be used throughout the crisis stage and obviously well after; for our communities, our neighbourhood can help themselves and grow together supporting each other *

The value of our solution after the crisis

  • This platform will continue to ensure lower margins for the customers and increased reach for small businesses, and therefore, will remain feasible, even after the crisis.
  • Potential to fill the gap in the market via features like classifieds.
  • Small scale business or startups or home makers can continue to use this platform to reach out to a wider customer base.

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