As the government and the people of India come to terms with the unique set of problems posed by the #demonetization move, the country still reels under the pressure of serving a primarily cash based economy of 1.3 billion people. Apart from the actual dearth of cash in the system, a lot of problems are being caused by information asymmetry and misutilization of resources. The consequences are long queues outside banks and ATM's, overworked bank employees, malfunctioning equipment and overall mayhem throughout the nation.
Being a location aware platform, bringing in the hyper-local flavor to providing a crowdsourced solution to the above problems was an obvious step. The challenge was however to get over the app only mentality and quickly integrate with other available channels with existing checks and balances for validation of information making adoption of the services more convenient for users.
The Facebook messenger bot is a very interactive channel for discovery of information and is also supported by a much lower barrier to adoption. Since we had thrown it live in production a week back, this was a very good opportunity to test out the waters with a first set of users. Chat with us here-http://zerch.in/bot/
The web channel has a 'Captcha' verification to increase genuity of information captured. Visit website- http://zerch.in/nearbyatms/ . The app channel was leveraged on both Android and iOS platforms with users able to view and update information for nearby ATM's and banks. Get the app here- bnc.lt/zerch
The plan is to now add information on where the old currency notes can be exchanged or used which will further help in dealing with the problems at hand.
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