Swati Asthana | swati.360@gmail.com

Bringing Hyperlocal Business Online

Guide Dr Bibhudutta Baral
Sponsor Google India Pvt. Ltd.
 
Keywords Indian communities;mobile-based platform;relationships;small businesses

Google Village has been envisioned as a familiar space where content can be implicitly, locally published, and can be interacted with. The nexus between the people’s mind, body, and soul could be studied by understanding the ways in which people interact with content in the real world and these ways could be replicated and made simpler on the web.

Indian communities, especially small town neighbourhoods are highly inter-connected; local news and information spreads mostly through word of mouth. A person in a new locality would ask the neighbours information about essential services, rather than search online. This is a faster way of communication and it helps in building relationships, also, such information is not readily available on internet.

This project explores the ways in which small businesses can be brought on the online platform, in addition to finding out the possibilities and limiting factors in venturing into the same. Beyond businesses, there could be sharing of knowledge and skills between the neighbours in urban and suburban India. Through this project, the need of such a system was studied and finally, the most feasible ways in which the system could be implemented were arrived at.

The proposed solution is a mobile-based application where people can share and find content, contacts of shops and service providers in the neighbourhood. The central component of this system will include people’s profiles, which will be a representation of who they are, the skills they possess or intend to develop. It will increase familiarity which in turn will encourage sharing and reuse of things within the local community and strengthen relationships.
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