Envoi

What inspired us

From people that know first-hand the struggles that come with purchasing consumer goods in developing countries, having our desired items shipped may be timely and costly. Especially in underserved cities in these countries, there is limited access to necessities that need to be provided every single day. According to Unicef, 29000 people die everyday due to a lack in medicine.

What it does

As a result of this social issue, we created a text-based system called Envoi that connects those that need packages to be delivered to those on the go. In this way, we can harness the power of human movement and the sharing economy.

How we built it

Using Python, we created the back-end prototype for Envoi. As well, we used Proto.io to show a visual demonstration of how the app would look like in the future. Finally, we created a website to potential scalability options.

Challenges we ran into

One main challenge we ran into was trying figure out a way to create an innovative text-based system for those that have limited access to technology (i.e. smartphones, computers, smart devices, etc). According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, less than 50% of the Pakistani population has access to smartphones. With that said, we tried our hardest to accommodate for the less fortunate by practicing functionality in the most basic of resources that most people already acquire.