GoKa_Runa

Meaningful Connections for Crises!

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The Problem

In times of crisis, Individuals and organizations want to help and look for help! Help with finding raw materials to fix a disrupted supply chain, help with finding the right supplier for basic masks and ventilators, help with deciding whom to donate to as a corporate body, help with finding a consumer who could use the extra alcoholic chemicals leftover as sanitizers. More often than we think, what is missing is just a connection. A connection between "the Search" and "the Offer" for goods and services.

Current listing services available online are plagued by a variety of problems - lack of reach, private ownership, paid access, focus on a single niche topic, and most importantly - complex registration and search features. Today we are missing a single centralized source of information, especially something that is fine-tuned for a crisis like COVID-19. Companies decide corporate donations based on person to person information, and not on real needs. Mask makers shy away from selling masks in fear of not having costly certifications, despite there being a demand for simple masks across the region. Hospitals don't know that the ventilators they are desperately looking for can be made in the neighboring state cheaply. Commodity hoarders stock up and raise prices because there is a clear lack of information on resource availability, leading to lower competition and high prices.

Example Problems

Persona 1: Raquel lost her job as a daily wage laborer and was 
not sure what to do. She seeks help financially and also psychologically. 

Persona 2: Metals Pvt. Ltd needs has excess aluminium by-product. 
The borders are now closed and it cant get them exported like before. 
Idle inventory costs are killing the company.

In short, we are missing meaningful connections despite the technology for the same being available.

The Solution

We envision a listing portal, highly customized for pandemic situations with the aim to connect resource Offerers and Searchers. It is built along lean principles with a razor-sharp focus on relevance, ease of use, and data security. Example - The portal is able to connect the local NGO willing to pay with mask manufacturing facilities- across Europe, to help the village grandmother by connecting her with a volunteer willing to get her groceries for free. Able to provide the daily-wage laborer with a quick insurance scheme provider.

How do we achieve this?

The web-based portal GoKa_Runa accepts registrations from Searchers and Offerers online in a 3-minute process. The goods or services being listed are then categorized keeping pandemic related priority rules in mind (considers effects like shortages, pricing, demand-supply gaps, regional limitations, etc.). The match-making algorithm then simply shows offers and searches most suitable to your needs.

How does the portal sustain? - Revenue Streams

Once deployed, the portal only needs to be maintained by a dedicated group of IT employees. The cost of operation is therefore limited to a handful of salaries and the costs of the hosting server (Zero if hosted by a firm or civil body).

Further, the portal is supported by three major Revenue Streams:

  • Logistical Partners to be directly proposed as and when goods are selected for exchange between firms or individuals (example, if an SME requests aluminum sheets from a new supplier to replace the old one from a locked-down region), a local logistics company working in the new region is automatically recommended.
  • Corporate Partners looking to better channels donations and goods
  • Financial Partners - Bank and insurance firms interested in finding insurance and loan seekers to provide quick offers.

Example Solutions from GoKa_Runa

Persona 1: Our financial partner BigBank finds Raquel needs help 
and offers her a discounted loan at this time of crisis. She is also 
contacted by a psychologist to offer her FREE help at this time, online. 
Moreover, Raquel finds a temporary job at Metals Pvt. Ltd as a seasonal 
worker which is now looking for people. Read below. 

Persona 2: Metals Pvt. Ltd found a local small scale manufacturer which
needs aluminum to make emergency hospital equipment. Metals Pvt. Ltd is
happy to sell the same at a very low cost and thereby sustain itself. Also, a freelance
supply-chain specialist offers to help Metals Pvt. LTD with free consulting 
services. Meanwhile, our Logistics Partner offers to move the metal consignments
safely and securely.

Dirty Details - Our MVP categorizes registrants as follows:

  • Individuals (e.g. Daily wage workers needing jobs, private industries needing day-to-day help with groceries, Volunteers, Farmers looking for labor or to sell extra stocks, etc.)
  • Firms (Banks, Insurance Providers, Donating Companies, SMEs looking for raw materials, Hospitals looking for Ventilators)
  • Non-Profits (looking for PPEs, offering help, looking for donations)
  • Civil Bodies (Public Authorities Governments, municipalities who need to look for resources, or use this portal to lock-down area exchange control)

We classify goods & services to optimize tracking of the demand/supply and enable our search and matching algorithms to provide meaningful connections: See images in the gallery for classification

This smart classification of goods and services are done using both standard simple search algorithms (results provided immediately) as well as additional AI-enabled methods (results provided dynamically to users in due time), ensure that listings are not a clutter - but to focus on enabling what people really need. The simplicity of code allows platform independence and quick deployment as and when needed.

The back end is written using Python which runs on the microservices framework. The database is relational and is based on MySQL. For Machine Learning, google's Tensorflow is used. The responsive frontend is based on HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Impact and Relevance

The solution’s impact to the crisis

GoKa_Runa provides an easily navigable and secure solution to civil bodies, manufacturers, businesses, non-profits, and individuals to list what they offer and find what they need. As a centralized portal, it is implementable across any region of interest at any level (city, state, country or the EU!) and offers a clear way to track changing demand and supply. Moreover, this solution directly addresses some of the most pressing concerns today during the COVID situation (also listed as multiple challenges for this Hackathon).

We highlight below some examples of direct usage:

- scaling respirators production by identifying raw material sources in the vicinity 
  using the portal
- remote medical assistance & preventive medicine via apps or remote consultations 
  by identifying people looking for help
- swiftly shifting production/service delivery to address the current needs (e.g. 
  protective equipment), by mapping demand for PPE across the region using the 
  in-portal map
- quick and efficient job matching, to allow a match between rapidly changing jobs 
  supply and demand, including for seasonal work and with priority for critical sectors 
  (health, agriculture and food supply chain, etc.)
- mapping vulnerable people and their needs by analyzing their request for help
- connecting volunteers with vulnerable people to support their needs.
- speedy access to public financial support. 
- identification of emergency Corona virus health Insurance providers and requestors
- crowdfund to support the fight against Corona virus such as the provision of medical 
  equipment to local hospitals, by matching Donators and seeker.

Additionally, the portal provides the following benefits:

  • Customization like regional control on matches to meet lock-down requirements (e.g. would not allow goods to move out of a lock-down region)
  • Prevention of hoarding and pricing monopoly by allowing a clear display of costs for similar goods (e.g. a mask cannot be sold for EUR 40 when the nearby family hand makes and sells the same for EUR 2)
  • Prioritization of goods classified as "essential" (showing the high demand for masks and ventilators on the landing page)
  • Prioritization of free and Voluntary services
  • Real-time monitoring of supply and demand statistics

After COVID-19

What happens when this is all over?

It's never over! We fight on and stay prepared for whatever comes next. While GoKa_Runa is inspired by the current pandemic, it is designed to be used in any similar crisis-situation which brings up a demand-supply information gap. Simplicity of Code and Platform independence allow that the portal can be deployed anytime the need arises. The COVID-19 situation serves as a perfect dry-run for this portal - to identify the caveats. We learn while acting during this crisis and are better prepared for the next one.

~ The Weekend ~

(EUvsVirus - 24th to 26th April, 2020) This has been a roller-coaster ride. We started with nothing, except passion among a group formed on short notice - a group of experts from different sectors each bringing in their unique views and skills. This has been work from scratch for the EUvsVirus Hackathon. We divided our work into 3 phases:

  • Ideation the longest phase where we went into the dirtiest and smallest details of this project making sure it is relevant and impactful. Design Thinking principles. Friday Eve to Saturday mid-day
  • Tinkering Playing with possibilities, collected inputs from mentors, took suggestions, and made mistakes - lots of them.
  • "Go-Go-Go" Phase This was all in, and two sleepless nights from Saturday late night to Monday morn.

Above all, we thoroughly enjoyed working all-in on a project we were passionate about. :)

Road Ahead

GoKa_Runa is designed to be simple! That's paramount to us given why we made it in the first place - for a crisis, when time is not a luxury. GoKa_Runa needs the development of the MVP into a full-scale platform which is expected to take 1 month with full efforts. Following this, it comes down only to deployment among parties interested. The transfer-of-knowledge and setup is only a matter of negotiations and legalities. This portal is not designed to profit the developers. However, the IP will be retained. Any fees will go into development and logistical related costs only, keeping overall expenditure low.

URLs

Pitch Video: GoKa_Runa - Meaningful Connections for Crises | Pitch

Website Portal: http://gokaruna.c1.biz/ IMPORTANT: The Portal is Work-in-Progress and only an MVP. Specific features have been kept deactivated to avoid overload of the temporary server

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