Rokkhi
We are solving the security problem at apartments and gated communities. Unwanted entries of strangers is a big problem in apartments and gated communities in Bangladesh as well as in many countries. and if there is a sudden guest in our home when we are not home they are not welcomed and fall in trouble.
So we have made a platform that will make users updated about every visitors come for them, every parcel come for them even keep updated users about vehicles entries and exits. Even they will get updated about the service worker's attendance. Our platform will make the whole home system digital and secured.
When people feel secured everything feels positive. Parents can work better and tension free in their workplaces. Robbery, thievery will be reduced. Disabled people will be treated equally and unabashed in gates.
In Dhaka city, there are almost 350K multi-storeyed buildings and among them, almost 150K buildings have a standard security and visitor data management system.
A house without security can't become a Home. Most of the apartment dwellers in our country feels disconnected from home when they are outside. In many cases, unwanted visitors and service workers come to apartments for various purposes which is a great security concern for apartment dwellers and guards. Their data is stored in notebooks in the analog system which is very inefficient. Moreover, managing different aspects of the whole building is very hazardous and confusing for the building manager.
Around 15 million people in Dhaka city feels security concern for their houses as there are only analog inefficient systems to keep track of building security.
This analog visitor management system is the main contributing factor to our solution. Attendance of regular service workers is not kept in most of the cases. Different works of building manager such as building notice management, bill collection, and tracking etc. are almost chaotic and really insecure. These are very important contributing factors to our proposed solution.
Building dwellers are our main customers. We went to hundreds of those buildings where data are kept offline to understand their needs and difficulties. After completing our development, we provided our app and web-based solution to a couple of those buildings and tested our system.
In our testing period, we connected security guards, apartment dwellers, and Managers in one platform. Working with the security guards, we trained the guards for the first few days so that not a single data get lost or misinterpreted.
We went to every apartment to install our system and encouraged the dwellers to add their other family members in it. We got a lot of regular users who helped us a lot to improve our system. The response from building managers and caretakers were very informative as they constantly communicated the building members through our system which helped us a lot to overcome our shortcomings in our developed system.
Our system contains necessary features so that the apartment dwellers don't need to worry about their home security as it ensures a secured connection with home visitors and guards. Apartment manager's work becomes much easy and less tedious as all his works can be maintained through our system.
We are providing various services to make everyday life secured and better. We provide guards an android phone with our app, provide a separate app for users and a web panel for admin.
We are using google cloud for back end technology.
Here are our key features:
Visitor Management:
When a guest gets to the user's community, the guards will make an entry into our app. This will send the user a notification. So, you will now be able to deny access to unwanted people. For seamless entry, the user can send invitation code, validate uninvited guests and see who has visited the user's residence over time.
Service Worker Management:
Guards will notify the user the moment his stuff enters the premises. The system automatically maintains their attendance. The user can keep track of their entry and exit times.
Child Security:
Parents can ensure the security of their children under the age of 8 do not go out without any guardian from at. If their children want to go out without any guardian, parents will get a call from guards.
White List:
Allow the user's closed ones to enter the building without needing explicit permission from the user. The user would still receive a notification.
Bill Management:
Admin can see which flats paid what service charge and the amount due. Users can get an online receipt of their service charge and other bills. Users will get reminder to pay bill timely. All building expenditure can be divided equally or according to some criteria.
Parking Management:
Users will be notified every time their vehicles enter or exit from the buildings.
Complain Box:
Users can send complain to building management committee about flats or management. Users will get notification when admin or caretaker respond to the complaints.
Notice Board:
Get notification from admins regarding urgent community information such as power outage, water shortage, lift maintenance, garbage disposal etc. Urgent notifications can be sent to guards such as to turn the motor on or off, to limit visitor entry etc. beyond certain hours.
- Upskill, reskill, or retrain workers in the industries most affected by technological transformations
- Technology
In the traditional approach, apartment dwellers, guards, and building managers are not connected in an efficient way. Our solution creates a three-way connection among the apartment dwellers, building managers and security guards which is very important to the security of a house.
Apartment dwellers and Building managers can get notified immediately whenever the guard gives data input. Moreover, total control of permission goes to the apartment dwellers about his apartment's visitor's or service worker's entry. This control gives more confidence about the security system and creates relaxation from anxiety.
In our solution, the security guard doesn't have to take permissions manually for one single visitor. Moreover, the guard doesn't need to find a way to keep all data safe and secured as our system ensures data security for every user.
In different bill collection and maintaining processes, maintaining building notices and complains, the existing solution is totally chaotic and confusing. Our system ensures easy, efficient and effective approach of maintaining different building aspects.
Urban apartment users feel disconnected from home while outside. They always feel a security concern about home and family from unwanted visitors and service workers. Our solution ensures that apartment dwellers get notified whenever a visitor comes to his apartment. From our developed solution, the user can control the access of the visitor even from outside. This connection with home and control over personal matters gives a user more confidence and relaxation about the security and safety of his house and family.
Managing different aspects of the whole building is very confusing, hazardous and insecure in the existing analog approach. In our system building manager is connected to every apartment of the building and also with the security guards. In any managerial duty, the manager can notify whoever needs to notified in a secure, efficient and faster way using our system. Again, as the apartment dwellers are directly connected with the manager, the manager can handle any complains and difficult situations efficiently with our proposed solution. This makes managerial work very efficient and hassle-free.
Security Guards feel detached from the whole building as he is not connected directly with the apartment members in existing analog approach. Again, guards have to entry a lot of unnecessary multiple data whenever a visitor comes. Our solution creates a direct connection to guards with apartment authority and building manager so that in case of any emergency, he can contact with respective person. Moreover, our solution will decrease a lot of unnecessary physical work for the guard.
- Rural Residents
- Bangladesh
- Bangladesh
We have launched our developed solution recently. So, we have been testing our solution to improve it more and more. Currently, we are serving in 2 buildings as a test project to improve our solution. Around 300 people are using our solution on a regular basis.
We have got great response from our ongoing marketing campaign and we are very hopeful and confident that we can achieve a great response from our new customers. According to our plan, we are planning to serve 300 buildings in one year and through this process, we are planning to connect 40-50,000 people in our platform.
For the next 5 years, we have a great aspiration to serve 10,000 buildings and 1 million users and we are constantly working on that target.
As we have recently launched our MVP, we will try to improve our solution and solve new two acute problems of city dwellers within next year. Our target is to gradually include every type of social and individual services through our platform.
In Dhaka city, renting apartment is a very difficult and tedious work for a renter. Most of the time, an apartment owner has to wait a long time for a renter while a renter has to search a lot physically to find a suitable apartment.
We have been trying to come up with some solution for apartment renting service for all city dwellers. We have plans to integrate a solution with our product which will create connection with apartment owner and renter.
In Dhaka city, many people face a lot of problems in time of medical emergency. We still don't have an immediate medicine supply platform in our country. We are working on to integrate this service within next year.
In next 5 years, we will try to integrate as many services as we can to scale our platform. We are focusing on Employment platform, Service Worker Platform, Product Delivery System etc. for next 5 years. We are confident that we can achieve this goals with the help of our partners and customers.
We are facing constant cultural barriers as our solution is totally new in our country. Most of the security guards face some difficulty using our platform. Sometimes, guards provide wrong information unintentionally when they don't understand what to write.
We are facing a great financial challenge as we have to provide installation for free. We are providing android smartphones to guards of the buildings for free. So, we are spending a lot of money on this aspect.
There will be some legal barriers for us in the next five years when we will be enhancing our platform with some new features. Our long-time goal is to provide all types of social and individual services through a single platform. For those services, we may face some legal barriers in the next five year.
For overcoming guards user experience problem, we are training every guard of the building that uses our system. Our members regularly train guards, take some practice exams and carefully monitor their performances in practical situations. If any problem occurs, guards can communicate with us directly and we respond to them accordingly.
We are making a contract with the building committee for at least two years so that in some months our cost in android phones reaches a break-even and by this time apartment users will get used to with our platform.
We will be making contracts with different existing service provider companies so that they provide their services through our platform. In this process, we can easily overcome legal barriers in some services. We will be integrating more startup businesses with our platform so that standard services can be provided along with overcoming of legal barriers.
- For-Profit
We have a pretty diverse and talented team.
We have two senior android developer, two senior web developer, one IOS developer, one designer following with 3 interns.
Two AI experts are working as part-time in our team.
We have a very creative marketing team consisting of two members following with one intern.
Last but not least we have an expert business architect and a successful entrepreneur.
Our team isn't that much big but full of some dedicated and hard-working soul. We don't confine our self within our comfort zone rather than exploit each other's team and help whatever way we can.
We formed as a start-up for 6 months but we are working on this for more than one and a half year and the idea was with us longer than that. We analyzed the market for a very long time from a lot of angles. Besides our team is a mixture of young and expert mind. There are some young and enthusiastic developers guided by a very experienced business architect. During this short period of time, we never felt that we are fish out of water cause we were guided by two successful entrepreneurs who knew their role clearly.
This idea was created from our own necessity. We know our targeted consumers really well because we are from that set of people.
Brad Schweig, Vice President of Operations, Sunnyland Patio Furniture once said
“Treat the customer like you would want to be treated. Period.”
We believed that and worked as hard as we could so that our customer would feel ultimate satisfaction. Our primary objective was analyzing our potential market and it's possibilities. We tasted our service in several areas to find it's lacking and improved it. So, we have experience with real-time data about our potential consumers.
We are currently partnered with another local company named SciTechbd. It is primarily a consultancy company in the field of Science and Information Technology including bioinformatics and nanotechnology. They support us by providing space for our office and small funding to continue our pilot operation. They also help us with their links to enhance our connections. But mostly they help us with their experience to grow as a company.
Key resources:
1. App and Web Developers.
2. Marketing persons
3. Guard trainers.
Partners and key stakeholders:
1. Security companies.
2. Developer companies.
3. Building Committees
Key Activities:
1. Approaching building committees and make a deal.
2. Training the security guards.
Type of intervention:
This is an online service for apartments.
Channels:
1. Social media
2. Ads
3. by reaching to building committees
4. Schools and offices.
Beneficiary:
1. Normal people as visitors
2. Disabled people
3. Service workers
4. Parents
5. Flat dwellers
6. Building committee
Customers:
1. Flat dwellers
2. Building committee
Value proposition:
• Impact measures
1. Making building security strong will positively change the environment of a building
2. Normal and disabled people will get equal welcome at the gate and disables people will find it very easy as normal people.
3. Relationship among neighbours will be positively changed.
Customer value proposition :
1. Customers wants to be connected at home wherever they are.
2. Customers wants their property safe.
3. Parents want their children safe.
Cost structure:
Our biggest expenditure is buying the phones that we provide the guards. Though the cost of the phone will be returned within 2/3 months but this is high one time cost.
When we scale up this cost our phone price will be reduced by 25%
Surplus:
We invest 80% of our revenue to scale up the business and adding additional features and services is very important to be a super app and survival. So we will reinvest in that section.
Revenue:
Initially our 100% revenue come from subscription model. We charge 100-200 BDT( 1.5-3 $ ) per flat monthly.
We have calculated when we have 400 buildings with an average of 40 flats per building then we will be sustainable.
So we will need monthly 400*40*100 BDT= 1600000 BDT ( 18500 USD )
to cover our monthly cost to become sustainable.
We have raised a total of 1 crore BDT ( 120000 USD ) and spend 2 million BDT ( 24000 USD ) in 6 months. We will need another 2 crore BDT (240000 USD ) to become sustainable.
We are participating in a few contests and we will look further investment within 3 months.
The biggest help we are going to get from Tiger IT Foundation is the mindset. The mindset of a big and successful company which we think are going to be our asset in the future. The experience we will get if we can work with Tiger IT Foundation will be worth above everything.
Our company is just in the piloting stage. To boost more and enter in the market place we need funding so obviously, the prize money is going to help us a lot. Besides in addition to prize funding, the Tiger IT Foundation will be providing selected winners of the Tiger Challenge with strategic and operational support from a network of seasoned professionals and entrepreneurs in Bangladesh which will be a tremendous help for any startup. So we are looking forward to getting a chance to work with Tiger IT Foundation and we will seek more funding from Tiger IT Foundation in the future.
- Technology
- Funding & revenue model
- Media & speaking opportunities
Initially, we are planning to launch as an apartment management system but in the near future, we are planning to expand our service with new options. Our users will be able to enjoy day-to-day service from our app like groceries service, ordering medicine, transport service, renting a space or selling it.
So we are gonna look forward to forming partnerships with retail chain shop, transportation network company, drug retail store, real estate company.
But initially, we are willing to partner up with security and real estate companies. As our primary plan directly includes security guards and building committee. Those partnerships are going to help us penetrate the market more easily and also help the security and real estate companies update their analog system.
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