12th grade student creates an “Udhaar Khaata” App for small shopkeepers and vendors

A 12th-grade student, Arjun Aggarwal, has launched the “Udhaar Khaata” mobile application in the NCR region for small shopkeepers, vendors, and kiosk owners. Udhaar Khaata allows shopkeepers to manage the credit that they give to customers, and allows shopkeepers to remind customers of the amount due from them. Arjun is studying at Heritage Experiential Learning School, Gurgaon.

Available on Google Play, the application has already been downloaded more than 8900 times and is only 15 Mb in size. Available in both Hindi and English, this easy to use app eases the issues related to credit transactions of small shopkeepers.

The app is already being used in Delhi – NCR and other cities such as Chandigarh, Lucknow, Dehradun, and Kanpur. Some users are even situated in neighbouring countries such as Nepal and Pakistan.

‘‘India has more than 12 million small shops. Most of these shops give goods worth around Rs 5,000/- to Rs 10,000/- to customers on credit per month. This app will help to manage customers credit, leading to the substantial recovery of potential losses/delays of payment for shopkeepers’’ says Arjun Aggarwal.

Arjun is passionate about do-able solutions and believes that technology has the potential for helping people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. He believes that simple solutions to everyday problems can have a large impact and can greatly improve the lives of thousands of people.

The idea behind Udhaar Khaata occurred to Arjun when one day his local shopkeeper was complaining to him about how he was not able to pay his suppliers on time because a substantial part of his revenue was tied up in the form of credit that he had lent to the customers.

Before he created the application, he conducted interviews with more than 50 shopkeepers in 3 cities. The results of these interviews pointed to a clear need of a simple and efficient solution to the problem.

The app was developed in React Native – a JavaScript-based mobile app development platform created by Facebook. To design Udhaar Khaata, the problem faced by shopkeepers had to be studied in greater detail. The interviews with shopkeepers revealed that they needed a solution that gave them the same ease in adding a new customer and transaction as it was writing in a notebook. Also, to increase comprehension of the features of the app, the user interface needed to be made in both Hindi and English.

Keeping these insights in mind, a beta version of the app was made. The app was then used by close to 500 users, and based on their feedback, the final version of the Udhaar Khaata was released.