Hyper-local is much more than delivering eatables to your doorsteps
I’ve been working on this piece for a while now and I recently heard that Pepper tap is shutting down. To be honest, I am not delighted in the slightest to hear the news. Startups like these should exist and I have used their services(other competitors’ as well) in the past. But this further strengthens my belief that you cannot just use heavy discounts to buy users.
I truly believe that the term “hyper-local” is clearly misunderstood in the industry. When you hear the word, you imagine “Food, beverages or some other eatables, delivered to your doorsteps”. This definition really is an underestimation of the scope of “hyper-local”.
For me, Hyper-local means normal folks like me and you, schools, merchants, emergency services like hospitals etc., all of them together, who are under the same geographical region. A true hyper-local application/platform should try to connect all of those entities under one roof. Just like you see in the real world.
A true hyper-local platform should enable effortless, secure and easy communication, e-commerce and information exchange among all entities within a certain geographical region.
Since 2014, We have been watching all these new “hyper-local” app brewing up everywhere around the world but sadly most of them are working towards delivering food or enabling anonymous chats or hyper-local deals or nearby events discovery but only one thing at a time. What these new platforms fail to see that all of those mentioned functionalities are subsets of a larger set i.e. the “hyper-local space”.
A hyper-local application/platform should do all of that, to be crowned as a true hyper-local application/platform.
If any user installs a nearby events discovery app, how often do you think he will check out the app? Why does he need to use four different platforms to cater his hyper-local communication, deal hunting, event discovery needs? On top of that, he cannot use his data(preferences) from one service on another service. There is really no plug and play around this situation.
The situation really demanded for such an application or platform. That’s what motivated us to create Pollen Chat where you can talk to other nearby users, get real-time deals from local merchants, discover events happening in your locality, search / rate / review local businesses all in one app.
We really believe that you don’t need four or five different so called hyper-local (not truly that hyper-local in practice) to get done with your hyper-local tasks.
With that, we have arrived to the end of this post. You can download the app using the following link.
If you own a local business, you should really be the part of your hyper-local equation, come join Pollen Chat and start connecting with your real, nearby and prospective audience even if you don’t know their emails or phone numbers to reach them. Start here.
Thank you for your time.
