Personal Experience Led To Queue Management Startup
Shachin Bharadwaj, Co-founder & CEO- Sminq, a queue management application takes us through his journey of ideation and starting up this venture.
Can you take me through the work process of Sminq? What need in the market led to this start-up?
Sminq initially tested waters by making doctors/clinics places live; broadcasting live status of the patients in the queue. Founded in 2015 with an aim to make your wait 100 percent transparent, Sminq continues to be operational in Pune, Mumbai, Nasik, & Nagpur at more than 150 premium clinics and has a user base of more than 500,000.
Sminq is now broadcasting real-time information from not only clinics but also all places around the world. From places being crowded to products not available, long waiting time at restaurants, government offices, popular monuments, your favourite celebrity being sited nearby, all updates are live and real-time at Sminq.
The co-founder and CEO, Shachin Bharadwaj realized the need for the start-up from a personal experience. The idea cropped up when the co-founders were contemplating different ideas for starting a new venture. During that time, Shachin’s wife was pregnant and there were regular visits to the hospital. During their visits, they had to wait in long queues with long waiting hours even after taking an appointment.
What is the current user base of the company, and how will you cater to a larger audience to a segment largely unknown?
Sminq currently has close to 50,000 users who have used Sminq app across 170 cities, in 20 countries making close to 20,000 places live in last 3 months of its public launch. Sminq is currently growing organically with users coming on board through word of mouth.
What is the team size and what roles and responsibilities do they generally handle?
Sminq team size is 22 people and is majorly led by our tech team of 12 people and rest are into operations and sales.
The core team of Sminq comprises of three co-founders, Shachin Bharadwaj who is the CEO, Sheldon Dsouza who is the Chief Architect and Santhosh Nagarajan who is the COO of the company.
Apart from medical services, what industries are looking to partner with? Are you in talks with the government too for sectors like tourism and transportation?
Our global app works across all sectors and places, it is a user-generated app and hence we do not engage with any govt or sector as such. Users pick and choose which info they want to share and broadcast on Sminq.
What is your business model? How do you make profits?
Sminq drives revenues through ads and as we generate footfalls to businesses we plan to charge them separate fees to get more traffic on Sminq.
Sminq initially started with pilots at a variety of places like salons, spas, restaurants, banks, retail stores, clinics & service centres. Sminq was tested at these places for the first six months and then decided to focus on getting the first business right and moving to other verticals. Accordingly, we decided on the doctor vertical. From 2016 to mid-2017, we focused on a solution to give users live information about waiting at doctors’ clinics and helping them take a spot remotely.
What are the accuracy levels and main advantages of the queue management system?
The accuracy levels of the queue management systems are always on point as the app is always getting updated live keeping in mind the delay due to emergencies or other such factors.
The main advantage of the queue management is that one can keep a track of the queues online, schedule their meetings/appointment, and keep checking the live information to reduce their waiting time at various places. One can plan their departure from their home keeping in sync with the data available on the app. This will help in reducing chaotic situations at crowded places such as billing counters, airports, railway stations, temples, shopping arenas.
