Inspiration
We have been engaged with helping to solve the COVID-19 crisis from the beginning as we have first started with 3D printing face shields and working on a ventilator 3D printed models. We have printed over 500 masks for the Bulgarian hospitals and then we have decided to call representatives from the government and ask them what they need so we know how can we help. We've had a really nice conversation with Burgas Municipality and they have shared that they are receiving multiple calls from people who are handicaped, left without a job or single parents that have no way of going to the stores to buy groceries and therefore we have discussed that if there is a platform for the people to share their needs and also people who may help the people with a need this is going to be useful for a situation like the current one. That is why we are creating Helpy.bg
What it does
Helpy.bg is an online market place for non-profit services. People can easily register and share what they need or what they can provide for free. This is making an amazing oportunity for anyone that can help to open and see how they can contribute to society.
Our most special feature is that the government representatives have accounts in our platform and they can review, verify, and approve the people that have special needs. That way the people who want to help will be sure that they are contributing to a real cause and that the people with a need are verified by the government and will not abuse the current situation.
How we built it
We have built our platform using angular as a frontend and Vapor as a backend. By using these technologies we are sure that our platform is secure, stable, and scalable. As of that moment, we can handle over 100 000 advertisements and traffic of more than 50 000 people per day just using free plans of Heroku and Amazon web services. Per the needs of the platform, we can easily scale vertically and still be able to provide the service free of charge to the government.
Challenges we ran into
Our biggest challenge was how to make the platform as easy as possible to use and bullet-proof secure. We have done that using advanced UX design for usability and the security of JWT authorization. Moreover, the infrastructure that we are running our platform on is using Docker so each service is completely enclosed.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We have built a working MVP for less than 48 hours which is easily upgradeable and scalable. The initial launch of the product will be with Burgas Municipality and the moto will be "For people from people".
What we learned
Our team is already working with startups around the world and the thing that we have learned in the past few months is that business is business but in unpredicted circumstances that are life-threatening the first priority is to help society and that is why we have put on hold our main profit activities and restructured the team in a way to be able to produce products that are contributing to the fight against the COVID-19. We have been the first on the market to provide a working application to track the spread of the virus and we have 3D printed different supplies for medics and government employees such as policemen and paramedics.
What's next for Helpy.bg
We plan to officially launch Helpy.bg before the beginning of May. We will do a 1-week test and observe the traffic on the platform and how people are using it. After that we will adjust the system to fit the needs of it's customers.
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