The floods of Chennai in 2015 taught many people lessons on humanity. It taught Jerry and Ignesh Paul—techie brothers — how much urbanisation has led us to being detached from our neighbours. Thus was born ‘Neibr Connect’, an app to connect to people and communities in your neighbourhood.
“When we were stuck in the confines of our home during the floods, we were totally dependent on our neighbours for help. That is when we realised how out of touch we were with those living around us! In the span of that week, we discussed how there are apps to connect with friends, celebrities and professionals, but nothing to connect with neighbours, who are integral to our survival in the society.”
The Neibr Connect app lets us ask questions among our social circles, right from information about schools to supermarkets in the neighbourhood. It also lets us post pictures to alert users about certain things like manholes on a particular road, and pin it on a map so people frequenting that route would know. This can also be used to post information about accidents to traffic in any area.
A screenshot of the app
It took Jerry and Ignesh almost eight months to develop the app, and Neibr Connect has been available for download since August last year. Since then, the app has been useful to obtain information in various localities. “Post demonetisaton, finding ATMs with cash has been tough, and hence we have had users posting about ATMs which had cash, along with their location.”
The app has also been useful in locating fallen trees after the Vardah cyclone. “Apart from information about tree fall, students of Anna University posted on the app about planting saplings in many neighbourhoods and asked assistance from volunteers to which they got a good response,” says Jerry.
As the number of users increase, so will the amount of helpful information shared on the app. He says, “I recently took a trip to Shimla with friends and we wanted information about snowfall in our location, but even the local hotels couldn’t help us with that. So, a forum like this can help us get information about very specific details too.”
Currently, the app, available for Android phones, is active in Chennai and Bengaluru. The app will soon be available on iOS too.
