The fight against Covid 19: The Apartment SuperApp

By San Banerjee, Co-founder and CEO of ADDA   COVID-19. The word that has changed the way we look at the world in 2020, teaching us many lessons. The first among the list of lessons learnt has to be the principle of social solidarity while not giving in to physical proximity. Even before the declaration of the Janta Curfew on March 22, 2016, the ADDA family has been working remotely and fine tuning the structure of not working from a dedicated office space. The HR department was quick to formulate a simple, yet efficient guideline to help employees work from their chosen locations. Client meetings, deployment, support were quickly shifted entirely to the virtual platform. Tools like Zoom Meeting replaced the conference room or the office of Associations/RWAs which served as the traditional meeting venue for a decade.   How Is ADDA Overcoming The Crisis?   Adaptability has become the guiding principle to fight this crisis. ADDA has always followed the policy of free communication among employees. The company has always encouraged its employees to recognise each other's strengths and collaborate with each other to pursue excellence. Today this environment of approachability is the greatest strength. Employees already share a good relationship with their colleagues. Thereby, communication, despite the lack of physical presence is easy. Teamwork is continuing as usual.   ADDA has always believed that the customer is god. The company has kept close touch with their customers, helping them formulate community guidelines specific to crisis management. The company has a well organised support infrastructure and a transparent escalation matrix that is of great assistance to the customers in this time of need.   Features To Fight COVID-19   Keeping in line with their philosophy of being a user oriented product, the ADDA App was immediately enhanced to help users fight the coronavirus crisis. Some top enhancements undertaken as early as the beginning of March, the ADDA App shows why it is the The Apartment SuperApp.   Collect-Delivery-At-Gate : Realising the importance of contactless deliveries the ADDA team rolled out its first feature to streamline the logistics of a contact free delivery system. The Management Committee can set up all deliveries, including groceries, food items, parcels, to be left at the gate from the backend. The security guard shall not be prompted by the system to allow the deliveries inside the premises. Once delivery details are entered in the guard’s device, the resident simultaneously receives an OTP to be shown at the gate, to collect the delivery. The guards do not have to relearn any new feature and neither do the residents have to go through the confusion of mixed packages.   Medical Personnel Search : This enhancement has been made to the App’s Directory section that listed the residents of the respective communities. Residents can now update their profession. In case of a medical emergency, residents can search for doctors or nurses or any other medical personnel who can help mitigate the emergencies or administer correct first aid, till the patient receives proper medical attention.   Panic Alert : An extremely important feature, the team was quick to ensure this feature is available to all users, irrespective of the paid or free versions. On downloading the App (available both on Play Store and App Store), residents can immediately configure the feature to add emergency contact numbers of family, friends or neighbours. A three second tap on the panic alert button alerts the already set up contacts helping in speedy resolution of emergencies.   Besides the three important features, the App has also listed vendors providing essential services like medicine deliveries, nurse assisted quarantine, community sanitation services in their Discover section. However, these services are restricted to the Bangalore region only.   The Way Forward    The pandemic crisis has shown apartment communities the huge responsibility they have to contain any emergency situation that may arise in the future. It has also shown the boon of automation in managing a community. The ADDA Team projects once the situation improves, more and more communities will realise the importance of streamlining and automating their community management methods. This shall give the industry the boost it has been looking for. Quick communication, disseminating of authentic information to a large audience, an automated billing and payment collection method generating ready funds are very important to ensure any residential community stays afloat healthily in the face of crisis.