Replaid Pte Ltd is a team of energetic, young, and dynamic individuals. There is George who manages stuff, Wilson who does the coding, Jaden who is in charge of design, Ron who manages sales and Sanjay who brainstorm ideas for the team. This National Day, the company released its first public application for the Singaporean public called Summon Auntie.
Replaid is a newly established company backed by the YES! Start-ups initiative. The company concentrates on quality assurance and game testing, mobile app design and development and also web design and development. Their objective it so work towards developing innovative and interesting mobile apps for the local and international market. Besides Summon Auntie, the Replaid team is currently working on several other exciting apps that are scheduled for launch in the later part of the year or early next year.
e27 managed to grab a quick word with Sanjay to find out more about Summon Auntie and how Singaporean drivers are benefitting from this app.
What is Summon Auntie?
In a nutshell, Summon Auntie is a community-based app made by drivers, for drivers. Developed as a tool to remind drivers and riders to display their parking coupons correctly, Summon Auntie sends out alerts when a user in the vicinity spots parking wardens near their vehicles, so that users can double-check to ensure that their parking coupons are still valid – thereby preventing any unwanted, and costly summons.
How did Summon Auntie come about?
All Singaporean drivers have had their own fair share of hard-luck stories, when unfortunate summons hit them right where it hurts the most – their wallet. And a majority of the time, it’s mostly due to carelessness on the individual’s part rather than anything else. Caught up over supper, over drinks, we neglect to keep track of time and similarly, our parking coupons.
Yet the one thing right in front of us the majority of the time is our handphones, as we move into a generation where keeping in-touch through social media’s an integral part of our modern lifestyle. So we thought – why not put them together, and create an application whereby the crazy need of Singaporeans to be on Facebook/Twitter/Social Media 24/7 could be put to good use, and help our fellow Singaporeans keep track of their parking? And that was how Summon Auntie was born!
How does Summon Auntie work?
Without going too much into technical details, in layman terms Summon Auntie utilises the GPS coordinates of your current ‘Parked’ location, transferring it to our secure server. Whenever someone within a 200m radius presses ‘Alert’, a notification is sent to anyone “Parked” in the vicinity, to basically alert and remind them to double-check their parking coupons to ensure that they’re still valid – thereby preventing any unwanted, and costly summons.
What would be your strategy in monetizing pet project apps such as Summon Auntie if traction proves promising?
Summon Auntie was developed as a pet project and to be honest, we did not expect the response to be this overwhelming. Supremely simplistic in premise, we were convinced of the viability of the app, but the immense popularity so far has been a real welcoming surprise. Reaching number one on the local App Store within a week, the likes of popular local blogger mrbrown has even tweeted about Summon Auntie, while various national media publications have also been in touch with us for interviews.
With that said, Summon Auntie was, is, and always will be a FREE application. Replaid will never charge for Summon Auntie, nor will it ever be a revenue-generator. We are all delighted with the overwhelming support thus far, and if you like our application, we can only ask that likewise you support our paid applications in the near future. It certainly isn’t easy being up-start indie developers in Singapore!
So what is the goal of Summon Auntie?
Our goal is simple – to give back to Singapore, and Singaporean drivers in our own small, little way. Start-ups in Singapore can never survive without the support of our fellow citizens, and with Summon Auntie we are just hoping to build a little goodwill, and establish connections and relationships with a supportive, appreciative user-base. Hopefully this good ‘karma’ would eventually translate into success for our potential paid applications in the near future – it has to be said that indie start-up developers certainly struggle to even make ends meet at times!
Launch and Stats of Summon Auntie
Summon Auntie was launched as a gift to all Singapore drivers and riders on National Day this year, and has since garnered over 6328 downloads on iTunes, and nearly 900 likes on the Facebook fan page.
As we type this reply, there are also currently 3360 parked vehicles, 4613 alerts, and 9489 notifications.
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