Advertisment

Gujarat’s Sikh boy helps Muslim brethren with his Ramadan app

author-image
CIOL Writers
New Update
CIOL Gujarat’s Sikh boy extends helping hand to Muslim brethren with his Ramadan app

At a time when fears of communal disturbance runs high, a mechatronics engineer from Gujarat has found a unique way to bridge the xenophobic gap. Kuldeep Singh Saini, an engineering student with roots in Sikhism, has developed an app—Ramadan 2016—to help his Muslim brethren keep track of the direction of prayer, iftar (meal after sunset), sehri (pre-dawn meal), prayer timings.

Advertisment

The app, which has proven to be a boon not only for the Muslim community, but also for thousand others who wait for Ramadan feast, has been downloaded more than 500,000 times.

CIOL Gujarat’s Sikh boy extends helping hand to Muslim brethren with his Ramadan app

Singh, 27, developed interest in app development during his engineering days, and also attempted to join the National Institute Of Design (NID), but failed to do so. Although he had never coded before and was more interested in the design aspect of apps, Singh learned coding from his brother, who runs an app development company called App Aspect in Ahmedabad. He started by developing basic utility apps for Android and iOS.

Advertisment

But, why develop an app for Ramadan? Singh says he was always intrigued by how the workers at his father’s garage diligently observed the various religious customs during the Holy Month of Ramadan, and he always wanted to make it easier for them to do the same. It was only in 2015 that he actually sat down to work helping his friends with an app. He started by researching religious practices by talking to the workers in his father’s garage. It took him two months to finish work on the UI and UX, while the actual coding took him another two months. The app was launched on the Google Playstore on May 10 , 2015, and got 53,000 downloads on the first day of the fast.

The app contains the 2016 Ramadan Calendar, namaz prayer times, Qibla Compass, Asma-Al-Husna (99 names of Allah), Hijri (Islamic Calendar), Hijri date converter, Ramadan duas and each day’s sehri and iftar timing. The app also shows five Muslim prayer times, helps the user with the pronunciations of duas and gives the English meaning of all the duas.

The basic version of the app is free of cost, with revenue sourced with native advertising. There is also an ad-free PRO version of the app, which costs Rs 99.

mobile-app