QueueOne - digital queueing platform

Inspiration

We see queues everywhere - inevitable, time consuming. In fact they impact business revenue negatively. We wanted to solve this problem by technology, by converting the long queues to their digital avatars. One that could save people's time, provide them real-time updates, guide them. In ideal situation, wanted every queue to disappear and the only person is any queue should be 'you' :-)

What it does

QueueOne provide tools to create and manage digital queues. Businesses/institutions can provide digital queues to their end-users, who can join them from anywhere. They will get all real-time updated about the queue progress, and should be at the point-of-service only when needed.

How I built it

Using our expertise of 12+ years, we built our solution with best practices that we learnt and keeping scaling up and best performant system in mind.

backend built with python APIs, and micro-services architecture. This allowed us to create highly customizable & distributed solution
Deployment on AWS and using GCP as needed (firebase), Terraform
SaaS platform with easy to use self-service dashboard
Both mobile and webapps for end users
Running multiple pilots and using customer driven development model (we build the feature which customers asked!)

Challenges I ran into

Resistance for change: Our solution does need behavioral change too. People are use to stand in queue. Not all will be on our digital queue from day one, thus people who are not creates operational issues.
Rigidness from big companies to be open for integration
expecting operational excellence to be part of our solution, thus we need to add many feature to help day-to-day operations.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Had our MVP launch with the pilot we ran with Election Commission of India (during General Elections 2019). We had no beta launch, and directly went live, had excellent comments/feedback from end-users and ECI. We got newpaper coverage (leading dailys), went on live on a radio show, local new channels etc.
We got to run our solutions with industry leaders in India (Apollo in healthcare, Future group in Retail)
Only startup from India to be selected by Bootcamp at Portugal (thejourney.pt)

What I learned

Technology is only enabler, we need to build solution that addresses real world problems.
Fail fast and learn from it. With all the pilots/prototypes we ran had improved our platform and we learned about industry. Apply this learning to win the next time!
Move fast, that how startups can be ahead of curve. We did not had IoT solution built yet, but it came up as use case in one of our discussion with customer. We had to build a prototype in less then a week and provide demo devices in less than a month! (and yes, we did that successfully)

What's next for QueueOne - digital queuing platform

More automation AI driven queue progress and recommendation for users [like: telling users - "you might be better off going at 3:30 pm to store, that when its least crowded"]
AR tech to help with social distancing [ creating AR driven perimeters to mark safe zones for individuals ]