Tech: New app designed by Mumbai teens, hopes to act as the ultimate travel guide

Jelam, Saumil, Shivam, Siddharth, Sanchit who created Radius

When we first glanced at the mobile app description, which suggests that you can find any spot in your neighbourhood, and across the world, we were surprised by the intuitiveness of the idea. Its developers - four Mumbai collegians - tell us they wanted to cut through the noise, "You have Just Dial for numbers, Google Maps for directions, Zomato for eateries. What is essential is to create an intuitive link between all these services." Most services do not compile reviews for small businesses like local gyms but they promise to tackle that problem. Another difficulty they wish to address is how certain applications work only in certain countries.

Jelam, Saumil, Shivam, Siddharth, Sanchit who created Radius

With help from an old and experienced search filter algorithm, the quartet began working on the app in early February by creating blueprints and designs. Siddharth Raja (19) then began with bringing these designs to life, and the beta version of the app was ready by April. The app's content developer Sanchit Tripathi (19) used the app while on a trip to Goa, and that's when they realised that this might change the way they travel, and that the app needed to be on every device out there.

Not updated
While apps like AroundMe, similar in concept to this, are out there, it hasn't exactly done well on the updating front, they tell us. Sanchit adds that they had also encountered bugs in it. This app, they claim, has a lighter interface and offers a more intuitive user experience. Naturally, devising an app like this came with its set of challenges. Siddharth shares, "Since the idea was to offer everything under one roof, a very trusted algorithm was required to accumulate different reviews and information about the same places from different directories and by sorting it all by location. We thus used cloud servers for the organization. But the Beta version of the application, gave us a great feedback and we were confident that the application did meet the goals it set out to achieve."

The Chinese wall
Incidentally, Siddharth who manages the technical aspect of the app, had previously created a proxy app iFreedom, which could help anyone bypass even China's Internet censorship, and which has over one lakh downloads in the Google Play Store alone. Saumil Tripathi (21) and Jelam Bhatt (20) were part of the team that won the Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC 2015). Eighteen-year-olds Sanchit and Shivam, younger siblings of Saumil and Jelam, manage the content development and social marketing side of the business. As of now, the bunch are excited with this creation and the hope that it will change the way people approach new localities and cities. "It's fun to synergise the skills we learn in our college classrooms and apply what we learn to change people's lives."

Available Android play store