Mumbai And Pune Go To Polls

The General Elections of 2014 were unique in a number of ways. Right from the changing demographics of a young India which was voting for the first time, to changing of poll pitches to attract an aspirational, middle class youth. But one of the most visible changes of this General Elections, was the role that technology played in it.

Political discourse on social media dominated the way candidates were accepted/rejected from parties. Twitter trends competed with opinion polls. The common man now had the power of Facebook to express his political views. Inspired by the role Twitter played in the Arab Spring, young men and women felt they had a magic wand at their disposal. A magic wand made of a mobile phone and social media, to try and enforce their political beliefs on the aspiring netas who came to them asking for their support. This indeed was a brave new world.

And now, roughly 5 months after that phenomenal elections, one of the influential states in the country, Maharashtra goes to polls. And just like last time, we at CityNaksha are trying to do our bit in ensuring more and more people come out to vote. And the way we do it, is by taking away one of the excuses people have to not vote - "I don't know where my polling booth is"!

We are helping people find out where their polling booth is located. That is the problem we want to solve. We help you locate your specific polling booth, so you have one less excuse to stay at home and not get that finger inked.

All you have to do, is open our website on your phone or computer, select poll booths, type in the name of your polling station, and we will show you where it is located, and how to get there.

Or if you are feeling lazy, just directly open this link.

If you don’t know the name of your polling station, just type in the Assembly Constituency Number and Part Number, and we will show you your polling booth.

If you open the website on your phone, or use the Android app, it picks up your location and shows you all the poll booths around you. You can find yours from this list, and get directions to it.

Due to limited resources at our end, and the sheer amount of polling booth data that had to be physically verified and put on a map, this time around, we are making this feature available, only for Mumbai and Pune. But we are hoping, that we will be able to add some value to the whole campaign of encouraging people to go out and vote. And that will be enough encouragement for us to roll this out for other cities as well, for the next round of elections.

If you are a first time voter in either Mumbai or Pune, do give this feature a spin, and let us know your thoughts. Help us make the feature better, and we will take you out for a Biryani! :) No, No, that is not a pre poll promise! :)

Pugme Traveller, A Prototype!

Did you know that the dream vacation you took never really happened till you post your pictures on Facebook? :) And I don't necessarily mean that in a sarcastic way. Its a very basic need inside of us, to tell a story about the things we do, the journeys we make! And Pugme Traveller is our attempt at understanding this basic need.

Why Did It Start :
The Missuj and I are travelling to Benares and Lucknow for the next 8 days. And we wanted to share our experiences with our family and friends, while the journey was unfolding! So we quickly rustled up this website, to see how it goes. It has a lot of glitches, and bugs and it looks absolutely horrendous. But this is just a prototype, to figure out if others would also want to tell the stories around their journeys, in a similar fashion.

What Is It :
A website which tracks our location while we travel, posts pictures on the trail, and lets our friends like/comment on them. And if any of you are close by, it lets you come over and say Hi! :)
The map shows three kinds of pins :

1. Red pins are the places we plan to go to,
2. Green pins are the places we have already visited and have hopefully posted pictures of,
3. Blue pins are pictures we clicked on the way

Clicking on a green pin takes you to all the pictures in that album (location)

What We Want From You :
We are basically looking for answers to these two questions :

1. Would you like to share the story of your vacations in a similar way?
2. Would you like to follow similar stories of your friends?
3. General feedback and improvements and features you would like to see

We would insanely prefer it, if you could drop us an email with your thoughts.

Known Bugs :

1. Though you receive a notification on Facebook everytime we check into some place, clicking on it takes you no where. You will have to separately open this link to access the website
2. The trail that gets plotted on the map is not very accurate, nor smooth. This is primarily because of the location data that is getting recorded on our phones. As of now, we can't get better data. Hopefully, this will improve in the future
3. THERE IS NO DESIGN! The website totally sucks, as far as looks and usability are concerned! :( We couldn't apologize more, for this! :( :(
4. You might get a lot of notifications on your Facebook page (each time we checkin to a place). We ran out of time before putting in a small feature to help you opt out of this. However, you can follow these instructions here, to remove the app called fb4cn - personal from your Facebook settings, and that should stop the notifications

But inspite of all the glitches and shortcomings, we are really, really hoping you will spend some time with the website, and share your thoughts on it, with us. We promise to work on it (after we are back from our vacation), and make it better if we get some decent feedback! :)

Technology In The General Elections 2014

The General Elections of 2014 will be unique in a number of ways. Right from the changing demographics of a young India which will be voting for the first time, to changing of poll pitches to attract an aspirational, middle class youth. But one of the most visible changes of this General Elections, is the role that technology is playing in it.

Political discourse on social media is dominating the way candidates are accepted/rejected from parties. Twitter trends are competing with opinion polls on which political ideology has an advantage. The common man now has the power of Facebook to express his political views. Inspired by the role Twitter played in the Arab Spring, young men and women now feel they have a magic wand at their disposal. A magic wand made of a mobile phone and social media, to try and enforce their political beliefs on the aspiring netas who come to them asking for their support. This indeed is a brave new world.

CityNaksha is also playing its own, small little role in this revolution, in the way India votes today. Being a locations company, trying to make voting easier for the man on the street, it was clear to us what we had to do. We would help people locate their polling booths on a map, and help them figure out how to get there.

The question we want to answer for the people, going out to vote is,
Where is my poll booth located?
This is the problem we want to solve. We help you locate your specific polling booth, so you have one less excuse to stay at home and not get that finger inked. No more I don’t know where the polling station is located, or I don’t know how to get there. Sadly, we can’t arrange for a cab to pick you up and drop you to the polling booth, yet! :)

All you have to do, is open our website on your phone or computer, select poll booths, type in the name of your polling station, and we will show you where it is located, and how to get there, on a map.

Or if you are feeling lazy, just directly open this link.

If you don’t know the name of your polling station, just type in the Assembly Constituency Number and Part Number, and we will show you your polling booth.

If you open the website on your phone, or use the Android app, it picks up your location and shows you all the poll booths around you. You can find yours from this list, and get directions to it.

Due to limited resources at our end, and the sheer amount of polling booth data that had to be physically verified and put on a map, this time around, we are making this feature available, only for Kolkata. But we are hoping, that we will be able to add some value to the whole campaign of encouraging people to go out and vote. And that will be enough encouragement for us to roll this out for other cities as well, for the next round of elections.

If you are a first time voter in Kolkata, do give this feature a spin, and let us know your thoughts. Help us make the feature better, and we will take you out for a Biryani! :) No, No, that is not a pre poll promise! :)

Startup Saturday Kolkata, March 2014

Sometimes you have to do things on a whim. Sometimes you need to take the plunge without thinking too much. Sometimes, you just have to trust that tiny little voice inside your head, which makes you want to throw caution to the winds and iump right in.

And if that sounds like the regular life of any startup founder, you may not be too far from the truth. And that is precisely what I did, about 15 days back, when I applied to volunteer for Startup Saturday. And after everything that has happened in the days since, I am glad I did.

SS has been around for quite a while in Calcutta. And just like a lot of budding entrepreneurs in the city, I attended a few sessions after I moved back here, last year. But as happens with a lot of things I try out in life, I quickly got caught up in other more seemingly important things, and quite forgot about it. Till this FB post popped up, asking for volunteers for the March edition.

My first reaction was a wary No! I told myself I had more than enough on my plate already, and I could completely do without the added distraction. A man (who is not known to the world as Superman), must know his limits, and I drew my Laxman Rekha around all things strictly in the CityNaksha universe. Every logical extension of my being, was certain that I shouldn't get involved. That my only priority in life was my startup, and I possibly couldn't spare the time even if I wanted to.

But before I knew it, I had volunteered and was talking to the Headstart team. The sane, calculating, logical me, slapped his passionate but distracted twin, and went away on a vacation. And I was mostly left to lick my wounds, and find out what I had gotten myself into.

My journey with SS began on a wonderful note, as I found myself interacting a lot with Shivani and Arti, two amazingly efficient women who coordinate with the chapters in different cities, helping them resolve any issues they are facing in organizing SS meetups. Shivani also doubled up as my mentor, guiding me through some very frustrating, and difficult moments that come along with organizing any event that brings together supremely talented, but often temperamental people together.

The sheer volume of gyaan that I have picked up from her in these few days, is enough to last me for quite some time to come. And that then brings me to my biggest learning experience in this episode till now: How to get along with people!

Its surprising how I have turned out to be the misanthrope that I am, given that it was not always this way for me. As a kid, I used to positively love interacting with people. But somewhere down the line, things changed, and I started to suck, at being around other human beings. Things came to such a pass, that lately I had come to the realization that I can't even handle basic interactions, which involve a disagreement of views. It would seem like a bother. A problem that is easier to run away from, than hack away at and resolve.

But the last couple of days seem to have started a small chain of changes, inside of me. I have now come to learn the value of listening to, and resolving divergent views, of not shying away from group dynamics that are unfavourable to me, of accepting my mistakes and quickly setting things right, of the value of a kind and humble word to the misunderstood, of the need of a hint of stern action to the mischievous. Things that I hadn't quite grasped till now.

This however, is just the beginning. I don't really know how this will pan out in the future. But I know, I will be undeterred by their outcome. I now know what tremendous potential and energy I can draw from the startup ecosystem in my city, and I am not going to give up on it. The journey ahead has as many promises, as challenges. But I know, I will trudge along. And when the time comes to hand over the baton to the next, more deserving one in line, I shall do so with the satisfaction of having done my bit for the entrepreneurs and the creators, in my city.


The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. 

- Robert Frost