Hunger has driven people to desperate acts. In Rajat Jain’s case, it sparked a eureka moment, leading to the search for a solution to one of the biggest problems faced by delivery companies: locating an address in minutes.
It all started in 2019 when Jain, 38, ordered food online. But it never arrived. “I was in an important meeting and the delivery personnel was calling me repeatedly because he could not locate my address. He wanted to know a landmark, whether to take the next left or right…,” says Jain, an Indore-based businessman. After a point, he gave up on trying to get the food, as the professional requirements were more pressing. Such incidents became a recurring theme as his professional engagements increased.
Having to go empty stomach filled him with thoughts of the difficulties in locating an address in India. He was already running a luxury hotel amenities manufacturing company called Kimirica with his brother, Mohit Jain, 35, since 2013. By 2017, they had opened a retail store, and subsequently started e-commerce operations. So, the Jain brothers were aware of the problems faced by delivery agents in locating customer addresses. It also weighs down the business by adding to the inefficiencies and costs.
Location problem
“We did some research into it and found that India loses almost $10-14 billion — according to a 2018 report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — just because of our poor address system,” says Rajat Jain. “We decided to find a solution to this issue.”
The country’s addresses are largely unstructured, especially outside urban areas. Some places have various spellings or even names. Sometimes, addresses are tied to a landmark that can be hundreds of metres away. Some places have pin code overlaps. These are just some problems that can cause havoc when a large number of delivery units have to be handled, especially by an automated system.
The Jain brothers started exploring virtual solutions as technology was becoming the building blocks of the future. Technology, they realised, was the only way a solution could be rolled out easily and across the country at one go. As they were not techies by training, the brothers decided to hire a technology team to develop a solution in the form of an app. They called it Pataa, which means address in Hindi.
“A lot of people in India don't even have a proper address. So, they don't get access to e-commerce and banking systems,” says Rajat Jain, who has a bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical science from Gujarat Ayurveda University, Jamnagar, and executive education from Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 2022. His brother Mohit is a mechanical engineer from Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyalaya in Bhopal in 2009 and got an MS in marketing from the University of Birmingham
in 2011.
The address solution
In May 2021, they rolled out Pataa Navigations, a digital addressing mobile application that gives an address a unique short code — similar to shortening an url using tinyurl.com or bitly.com. A user of the app has to either enter an address or drop a pin to their location on a digital map. The application will cover this into a short code of 7-11 alphanumeric characters of the user’s choice.
Take, for instance, a long address like this: ET Digital, Times Internet, FC - 6, Maharaja Agrasen Marg, Film City, Sector 16A, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, 201301. By using the app, this address can be codified into, say, “office address 1”. It makes the process of saving and sharing addresses easier.
Pataa claims the location on the digital map to be accurate by 3 metres. Jain says it has an address accuracy of about 98% as it creates a 3x3 metre block of your marked location on the map. Google Map claims to give an accuracy of about 20 metres.
Such a technology is a boon for courier, food, or parcel delivery agents. They have to cover multiple places a day and finding addresses can take up time — it can happen in both crowded and isolated places. It also helps retail customers share their location more precisely. “This solves the problem of typing your address again and again on e-commerce websites and other platforms. You can simply put the Pataa code on e-commerce platforms and it will autofill your address,” Jain says.
Read More at https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/entrepreneurship/taking-on-google-maps-pataa-promises-a-smarter-solution-to-a-10-billion-problem/articleshow/96269218.cms