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How an app changed a maid's life and other wonders

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Palash Krishna Mehrotra
Palash Krishna MehrotraMay 24, 2015 | 14:43

How an app changed a maid's life and other wonders

I just ordered a meal for myself. Mutton korma and three parathas. A bowl of fruit. I didn’t call for it. Instead, I used an app. As I did, so I realised how used we have become to the internet. It’s a cliche to say that it runs our lives, but it does.

Then I thought about my first job back in 2000. Turn of the century. A website called tehelka.com. And I thought: what a crazy and ridiculous and wonderful idea for its time. In the Silicon Valley, people were talking about the dotcom bust. The boom was just taking off here.

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It was a crazy idea because the internet was still making its way into Indian homes. Even if you had a connection, it was a slow dial-up one, which made it difficult to open sites like Tehelka. So while Tehelka generated content, few could access it. In fact, the idea that every organisation should have a website was a new one.

Playfulness

It was around the same time that India Today launched its own site. Everyone was new to the game. There was a sense of playfulness which is natural to the medium. It was evident in the names people chose for their sites, names like "tehelka" and "hungama".

What really has changed the way we access the web is the mobile phone. Once they put the internet on the phone, the world was a changed place. Back then, most people didn’t have mobile phones.

The phone was still a humble device with which you used to make calls and send text messages. It was essentially a cordless and pager rolled into one. The phone started out clunky, then shrank in size. I still have an old Motorola handset from the Noughties. Cute little thing with beautiful curves, with the Moto indent at the back. A design classic. Like the Coca Cola bottle.

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The phone started getting smarter with really simple things, things we don’t even think about these days. You could personalise your phone. You could choose your ringtone and wallpaper and just that was a big move. Games came next. Kids who personalised their phones were also thinking: hey, why can’t I get this gaming system on my phone? Why can’t my stereo player be on a phone? Nokia was famous for putting the 1970s game Snake on their mobile devices. Other companies followed suit with what were called "time-waster" games like Pong, Tetris and Tic-Tac-Toe.

Putting the internet on the phone was a completely different ball game. By the 1990s, websites were full of colour and loaded with images and text. Mobile phones, on the other hand, had small monochrome low resolution screens.

Secrets

They were low on storage and processing power. The Wireless Application Platform or WAP was developed to address these concerns. It was basically a stripped down version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the standard protocol of the World Wide Web.

Back then, trade secrets were closely guarded. Companies didn’t want to expose the secrets of their handsets so they developed software in-house. Developers who were not part of this inner circle had no opportunity to write applications for phones.

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Gradually, companies realised that if they wanted to continue selling their products they would have to address the needs of the customer. This meant that they had to be less protectionist about technology. They would have to expose the inner workings of the machine to some extent.

The gamechanger was when the first proprietory platforms emerged. That’s what we mean when talk about Android and iOS began. One of the first was Blackberry’s RIM OS (operating system). Freelance developers could now actively create applications for them.

We can’t do without apps now. It has completely transformed our world. There’s an app for everything. You want to book a ticket or find a plumber or the nearest doctor, you use an app. The brightest minds in business and technology are now here, in the app space.

This is where the action is. Think about it. Traditional businesses are not where the big ideas are. You can manufacture pharmaceuticals or automobiles but it’s not an earth-shattering idea. You raise capital. Set up a plant. You sell. But what do you do if you are a creative maverick? You create an app.

Transformation

Let’s come back to Millionkitchen, from where I ordered lunch today. Food is one area where there is no dearth of innovative app ideas. Foodpanda will get you food of your choice to your train compartment.

Millionkitchen, which has just started operations on a limited scale, connects you to your neighbourhood aunty. It gets you home cooked food at minimal cost. If you can cook, all you have to do is get in touch with them. They pick up the food from your home, get it to their central kitchen, package it, then deliver it to your doorstep.

The aunty makes some money, and the consumer gets a nice meal. As Vimlendu Jha, co-founder of the website says, his maid now makes Rs 12,000 a month, much more than a standard cook’s salary. All she has to do is put her cooking skills to use in her own kitchen. This is what they mean when they say that technology has the power to transform lives. All it takes is one brilliant app idea.

Last updated: May 24, 2015 | 14:43
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