Hello,
I came to know about this forum when I visited Stockholm in August 2015, and met a few Indians in the startup community and since then have been following it quietly.
This is my first post and I am shamelessly promoting a labour of love – Pothole Stories Calendar 2016 by the Fill in the Potholes Project, I am working on.
The project began in 2014 and being into business of advertising, we started filling the potholes with storytelling. Visit www.fillinthepotholes.com to see the photo stories. Then we realised that we are also cribbing about the problem, but with a bit of creativity. We asked ourselves if there any way to solve the problem or at least attempt to solve the problem. We realised that every smartphone today has GPS, 3G and Mobile camera. What if we integrate them together into an app and let citizens report potholes across the city. This thought led to an idea of an app to report and track potholes.
To build this app we needed funds.
Plan A: Fund it ourselves. But in that case only the project team members know about the project.
Plan B: Include citizens of Mumbai in the project right from the idea level and go for crowdfunding.
We chose plan B and successfully raised funds from crowdfunding. So far we have developed the Spothole App for Android and the iOS is under development. We are in the process of approaching the local authorities and NGOs working in the road safety domain to partner with the project.
Now the project is running short of money, so we have compiled the pothole photo stories into calendar 2016 and are selling it to raise funds for the project. Are you still writing ‘2015’ by mistake? This calendar is a must have for you.
If you liked the project, please pay what you want to buy the calendar and help us raise funds.
Thank you for your attention, and wish you a prosperous year ahead.
asha chaudhry
hey rupesh,
this is really neat!! i love the problem you are solving and your approach!!
i’ll promote aggressively and let’s hope you guys raise enough money!
i’m super intrigued about the rodinhooders based in stockholm – who are they??!!
🙂
good luck!
Rupesh Mandal
Hi Asha,
Glad to know you liked the project and thank you for sharing this. 🙂
One more thing, I missed out to tell is that the Fill in the Potholes project is completely transparent in terms of Work in Progress and the Project A/c statements.
About the Rodinhooders in Stockholm, they are originally from Mumbai but now in Stockholm for work. Also, working on some projects on their own in parallel. I met them during the Stockholm Tech Meetup.
Sridhar Rajendran
Hi Rupesh,
Good work. In Bangalore, we have a website called IChangeMyCity to report potholes and several other civic amenity issues. Such kind of apps makes it possible for ordinary citizens to take part in running the city. After all the change must start with us.
asha chaudhry
hey rupesh,
how many did you manage to sell??
asha chaudhry
hey rupesh,
just read this –
https://www.change.org/p/ajoy-mehta-municipal-commissioner-of-mumbai-let-s-report-track-and-fill-potholes-of-mumbai-using-citizen-made-spothole-app
would you like to update your post on the progress so more rodinhooders get to know about SPOTHOLE app? happy to promote!
Rupesh Mandal
How do I update? The subject of earlier story is different about the Project overall. The story of online petition is the latest development. Can you please guide how do I plug it? Or shall I write I new post? Let me know.
asha chaudhry
hey write another post rupesh!