Apps take the ‘social’ route!

When Abhinandan Satyanarayan, a Bengaluru-based resident moved to a new locality in the city, he chose not to resort to the umpteen apps offering services and service providers in the city. Instead, he thought it’s best to ask around in the locality for a local electrician, the closest gym and the best supermarket.

“Actual consumers know the best,” he says, adding that it also helped him know his neighbours. Sounds old school It’s not, because he did this using an app called Hey Neighbour, which connects people living in same locality. From making us less social by limiting ourselves to our phones technology seems to be mending the loss a bit by introducing the socializing concept again, this time through apps.

“There are a lot of apps where people can chat with other people they know. But we realized the need of a platform, where those living in the same locality, sharing the same building, wanting to reach out to one another. Using their phone was the best medium for doing so,” says Gaurav Srivastava, cofounder, Hey Neighbour. The social media bug seems to have multiplied into many, smaller, locally connected platforms, where parents, sports enthusiasts, fashion freaks—or whatever binds people and classifies them into groups—is a link. Despite chat forums, online messengers and Whatsapp groups, app makers have identified target audience wanting to chat on a dedicated app.

“Whatsapp groups are too generic for parents who want to discuss their kid’s homework, events in school and other such things with other parents,” says Mahesh Vorkady, co-founder of Talkative Parents, an app dedicated for parents to interact with each other.

The app comes loaded with a database of classes and sections offered in over 7,000 Indian schools and allows parents of relevant class section to connect to other parents of the same section, introducing them as their kid’s parent. The app also has over 35 schools on board who communicate with the parents through the app. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of fashion portals have also been using social engagement as a tool to involve more people on their platform.

Fashion app, Wooplr allows users to create styles and publish them, where other users can comment and engage in interacting with other people on the platform. Myntra’s revamped version allows users to post fashion queries, get responses and also have interactions with celebrities promoting their fashion styles.

Targeting different lifestyle segments, entrepreneurs see this as the next big opportunity by bringing people of same hobbies together.

IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, Nayan Karnavat and Ravindra Kumar laun-ched an app Spyn, early this year targeting sport enthusiasts in the city. The app allows users to search for tournaments in the city, join tournaments and find other players based on their location.