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A Story of Mobile App. AutoCop, App That Will Make Your Auto Rickshaw Ride Pleasant

AutoCop Android App by ShimBi Labs. AutoCop is social awareness app that allows users to share their experiences of Auto Rickshaw ride with others. It helps a rider to channelize his frustration or good experience of Auto Rickshaw ride and share it on various social media platforms. We aim to facilitate people in India (including Auto Rickshaw drivers) to be more aware of the benefit achieved by accumulating the day­to­day service quality.

We interviewed Siddharth Deshmukh, Founder and CEO of ShimBi Labs. In this conversation, Siddharth explains about the idea behind the AutoCop App, how it can help to solve many of the problem today Auto Rickshaw riders as well as service providers face, his vision and much more…

How did the idea of AutoCop into being?

Early in life I use to use a lot of Auto Rickshaw, later once I bought my car naturally I stopped using them, but in recent for business, I was travelling across the country and sometimes I decided to use Auto Rickshaw. Whenever I am looking for Auto Rickshaw two things I experienced most prominently, it is likely that I will face either of these situations, refuses to go to destination or charges excess money. Earlier also it was the same experience, but this time, I decided to get to the root cause of it and decided to talk to stakeholders. Listen to what they say:

Passenger
“There is no way that the situation is going to change unless the traffic police department take strict measures. An auto rickshaw wala (Auto­rickshaw operator) going to charge excess or refuse to go.”

Auto Rickshaw Wala
“For some destinations, I found it difficult to get passengers. On many occasions, I had to return without any passenger.”

Police
“We are taking action against the errant drivers. But unless there is an active public participation the issue will remain the same”page1image18496page1image18656

I think there is an element of truth in each side, and every point of view needs to be answered after comprehensive study. Moreover, such study is only possible, if we have structured data, if not for all but the majority of such incidents.

So what is solution that you thought?

I think the solution lies in Big Data. We need to collect huge data if possible from users of Auto Rickshaw every time they use it. Once we have uniformly structured data from small Towns to Major Cities and Metropolitan Areas of India. Based on such structured data, It is possible to learn trends, generate heat maps and pinpoint some facts that need to investigate in great details.

For example in Pune at Magarpatta City many Auto Rickshaw Drivers are charging extra. In Navi Mumbai Auto, Rickshaw Drivers are refusing to go to Mumbai. Why because they have their own reasons, sometimes they are valid reason but not always. To take proper action and to find a sustainable solution needs large data, which can through insight and tell us many trends and facts.

How will you collect such data?

We at ShimBi Labs thought of addressing this problem. First step was to create one simple to use Mobile App. to capture user experiences and save them in uniform and structured format.

Then make it available to related Authorities, Auto Rickshaw Unions, NGOs, Data Scientist and Policy Makers. So that it can help making proper decisions and policies.

However, before we create this app. we were very clear on certain points.

1. This app is not for registering complaints.
2. This app is not for abusing anyone.
3. This app is to share your experience of auto rickshaw ride.
4. This app will gather user experience and help setting trends and heat maps.

So what should this App do?

1. Provide an easy way to capture the required data.
2. Data such as Auto Rickshaw number, time and location of the incident.
3. and exactly what happened such as Fare denied, Charge Extra, Meter Tempered and or everything was fine.
4. Provide some useful utilities such as virtual meter, route map etc.
5. Share your Auto Rickshaw ride experience with friends on Facebook and twitter So that is how AutoCop Android App took birth. Learn more about AutoCop App

Any examples of data and trend capture through AutoCop?

App is in very early stage so we are waiting for enough data. But following are few examples how it can through some insight information.

*These are just indicative figures

Example 1

In Pune we collect data:
Start Point: Laxmi Road Day: Wednesday Time: 7 pm Destination: Koregaon Park, Kalyani Nagar, Viman Nagar

Data was collected from 15 March to 18th March 2014

Above data clearly shows that it seems most of the time Auto Rickshaw on Lakshmi Road are reluctant to go to Koregaon Park, Kalyani Nagar, Viman Nagar or they over charge the passenger.

So find the solution to it, all stakeholders must find out real cause and proper solution to it.

AutoCop1page3image10000

Example 2

Start Point: Bangalore Railway Station
Day: All Days Time: 9 pm Destination: Any destination beyond 10 Km.

autocop2

Data was collected from 10 February to 20th February 2014

Above data is indicating that most of the time Auto Rickshaw at Railways Station are overcharging passengers. Great number of such Passengers may be a tourist or temporary visitor.

In both examples reasons can be many but such systematic data (Geo tagged and time stamped) is very useful to start an investigation.

Any further decision based on such solid data will be of more effective.

Example 3

Here is another example of Profiling Auto Rickshaw Number.

autocop3

These data will easily alert authorities to keep a regular check on these Auto Rickshaw Numbers. More details on what offends they are doing also can be obtained from data, including Geo location and Time.

What are the key execution challenges you have faced?

This complex task and unless active participation of people it is impossible to solve the problem. We request all stakeholders to help us. Spread awareness.

Auto Rickshaw transportation is going to stay here for long, and there is huge scope we can work together. If you share same thoughts and believe in this idea that it will work, some funding is welcome. Your suggestions are welcome, if anyone of you have some good idea, you are welcome to join our team.

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How we funded and developed our products through services (Bootstrapping)

You will find many of the articles on bootstrapping on the web. But today I would like to share with you how we developed our two products Shimbi CMS Budo and ShimBi MyBilling through Bootstrapping.

“The basics of bootstrapping is simple – Earn money, spend less” Jofin Joseph.

When we started ShimBi Labs in 2005;  we had a clear vision that we will develop 4 best products for SMBs (Small and Medium size Businesses). But the situation was that neither we had enough funds to develop our products, nor an idea about products to be developed.

First and foremost challenge before us was to raise funds to build our dream products.

Bootstrapping

We had decided to opt for Bootstrapping (as no other options were available.  Angel investor or VC will not fund any biz without even a product idea!)  So our first focus was to have sufficient funds for the survival of the startup and then to invest in product developments.  For that,  we chose very unconventional market for Indian software company; we decided to focus on Japan as our primary market. Yes, market with high potential and hardly tapped by Indian software industry.  At the same time, not an easy task to enter the industry if we had not lucky enough to get the industry veteran of Japan as our Mentor, who was courteous and introduced us to potential customers.

With 9 years of rich experience in providing services (software development and consultancy) in Japan, we got better insights into the problems that can later evolve into a product.  We understood and learnt how to achieve the highest quality in any software. All this, later helped us build our own products.

While doing this we never forgot our original vision of building products for SMBs. We had to remain extremely careful to keep the service track completely independent of the product track. Thumb rule was: never use the same developer to be working on the services.

Product Ideas

So how we got ideas about Products?

Honestly we never brainstorm. “Necessity is the mother of invention”  Exactly !!! that is what had happened.

1. Content Management System

As a service company, prime necessity is to have an official website with the ability to update it often. Being all techies in the company, as a founder; I was forced to quit coding and focus on all other activities necessary to run the business, which includes regular website updation. For this, I was in need of a website with easy to use CMS (Content Management System).  Surprisingly, instead of using the existing solutions available, we built our own CMS. That’s how CMS Budo taken birth.

2. Online Invoicing Application

Next, it was essential to have Simple Invoicing Application.

Being all engineer company, we were reluctant to learn any accounting software. So I decided to learn few basic things, about how to write an invoice and started making them in Excel. Wow that was a huge mess, almost every second invoice was with some silly mistakes. Tracking them, save them in folders and send reminders was the big pain in the ass.

I decided to repeated the same idea (as CMS Budo) of having our own online invoicing application, instead of availing the solutions that already exists in the market. Later, it was named as ShimBi MyBilling!  First we sold it as license version to 100s of customers, and now we converted it into SaaS (Software as a Service) model.

We realise that these softwares (Web Applications) are useful for us and making a lot of sense. Creating value, increasing efficiency. Now we can spend more time on our core competency.

We also realised that if these softwares (Web Applications) are useful to us then they can be useful to other SMBs too.

Find customers before you build

To validate our idea we started to communicate with our existing customers, and many of them were readily convinced.  They asked us for demos; it was a great chance for us & we made use of the opportunity without any delay. Right after the demo, several feedbacks and customisations’ requests flooded in our mailbox.  Hence, we decided to make CMS Budo and MyBilling generalize & convert them as a product useful to all. We convinced some of our customers to fund in the customisation and development of the product and in turn offered them a copy of the full product at a nominal price.

As a result, today both the products had crossed several iterations and versions in the market. All by bootstrapping. I strongly believe that the product must create value for small businesses than excite VCs.

  • ShimBi MyBilling is available as SaaS
  • and CMS Budo will be soon available as SaaS

Goal is to build Innovative Solutions … Simple, Powerful yet Affordable

Please share your experience of bootstrapping with us.

Guest Blog Post by Siddharth Deshmukh, Founder and CEO at ShimBi Labs. A passionate about product building. Single minded, manic, in pursuit of quality and excellence … I am an entrepreneur building our product – MyBilling and CMS Budo.