In a country where 64% of citizens defecate in open and 6.4% of the GDP is lost in health costs, productivity losses and reduced tourism revenues, it is essential to have a toilet at every public place. However, don’t you hate it, when you have to ask others while finding a public toilet! ‘Toilet Finder’ brings the solution.
‘People practicing open defecation belong to India,’ is now a global perception. UN data suggests, 60% of all open defecations in the world, are in India. In metro cities, where a number of public toilets have now been made under Swachh Bharat to stop practicing urination in open, commuters don’t bother to walk around, find a nearby toilet to answer nature’s call.
Apprevelations, a startup founded by Alok Nikhil Jha, a student of IIT Delhi and Karan Garg Lakshay Chikkara, Himanshu Lakra & Kush Kumar, students of Delhi Technological University has launched a mobile app, ‘Toilet Finder’ that tells you the exact location of nearby toilets.
Kalpana Jha, Marketing-Apprevelations avers, “Our app helps locate the nearest available toilets, be it public toilets or toilets available in shopping malls, restaurants, retail stores, hospitals, gas pump stations and other public conveniences. It has a different algorithm running in backend that calculates distance between current location to nearest spatial distance and guides to the path so that user can reach the location by a simple click.”
Applicable globally, the app helps get right answer to the nature’s call hygienically and is useful for tourists travelling to a new State/City/Country, people/patients who have to work and travel, but require clean loos regularly and those who opt to defecate in open despite of toilets available in particular location.
Since its launch, the app is being downloaded by 50-60 users on a daily basis, finding users from various other parts of Asia, United States, Canada and Europe.
“It’s indeed an irony that most of the people in Urban Areas & cities having smart phones but don’t want to use it to the fullest and when the nature calls, they try to locate nearest possible location to free themselves. And on questioning, they have a strong support that, “यहाँ कहाँ हैं शौचालय? मुझे कहीं नहीं दिखीं तो खुलें में कर ली..” i.e. awareness. India has over 317 million users accessing the internet at least once a month. Urban India accounts for 209 million users out of an overall urban population of 414 million people, while rural India accounts for 108 million users out of an overall population of 922 million people. This is approximately around 25% of the country’s population. “We have targeted these active people and trying to make it viral so that more and more users opt and help those in need.”
