The founders of Pune based Tastykhana (which was acquired by Foodpanda) have launched a new Mobile app with aim of reducing a pain point that most of us encounter every now and then – Waiting in Queues – be it at a Doctor’s clinic or for a Job interview or a Restaurant or other similar places.
Called SMINQ (See Me In No Queue), the app helps you save the long waiting times we frequently encounter.
The app essentially allows you to join and wait in the queue without being physically present at the place – SMINQ lets the user join the queue remotely, letting them know their exact position. the app also notifies the user with the live status of the queue, through push notifications. As a fall back, the user can also get the status of the queue through SMS ( incase, the phone has internet or network issues)
The co-founders – Shachin Bharadwaj, Sheldon Dsouza and Santhosh N – started working on this idea in July of this year and piloted with 8 clinics in Pune in the month of August. According to Shachin, the app was well received by the vendors as well as the users.
The company claims that so far 13,000 unique users have used the system and have saved 100s of hours of their personal time. The app has already been downloaded by 1000+ people in first 30 days of launch and has been rated highly (4.8) by its initial set of users.
As far as monetization of the services is concerned, SMINQ charges the vendors for use of their services and their plans start from Rs. 2000 per month. For the users, there is no cost associated for using the app. Within first month of the launch, SMINQ already has multiple paying clients.
Shachin Bharadwaj, Co-Founder & CEO, even tweeted cheques paid by their initial customers.
We worked really hard last 4 months, & apart from the 15K+ customers this pic makes us feel good. Real money :) pic.twitter.com/doh6i4peP3
— Shachin Bharadwaj (@shachinb) November 17, 2015
Currently, the app is active for clinics and available via private beta invites for walk-in interview process.
Our View
The app without doubt solves a pain point that most of us face on regular basis. The app will work well with certain verticals, especially in places where the waiting times are quite high like in case of Doctors clinic where a patient can sometime take inordinate amount of time. Even in case of Job interviews, this app makes sense. However, in places like restaurants, the queues can vanish quite fast, and relying on the app may actually miss you the hearty dinner.
It would be nice if SMINQ app can gather ‘time required’ intelligence based on previous data and help customers in queue the “Estimated Time Required” to finish the queue.
Thanks for the story. With regards to restaurants think of it as adding your name to Vaishali’s waiting list while you leave from home and then be there just in time. And even if you are late, you won’t miss your meal.
With regards to estimated time, we are already working on this and as mentioned on our clinic webpage we are building proprietary algorithms to give accurate estimate of time. Initial internal tests have given positive results and this will soon be made live to users in batches.
Aah…thats good to hear… Thanks Shachin for the update..
Great though .. Specially for India where we waste lot of time just like that … this will go a long way !!
Awesome Sachin. That’s a huge problem and very few players trying to solve. I am happy to hear of this app. Let me know if we at SocialHelpouts.com can be of any help. All the best :)