Mi Mercadito

It is an application that transforms and digitizes the Peruvian markets. It makes it easier for merchants to manage and sell their products online, they can face the technological revolution.

Mi Mercadito is a service application that helps merchants sell their products online, manage their finances, and be visible to new consumers. This is possible because the application offers online payments and an integrated delivery system to streamline sales. Delivery is done by local tuck tuck drivers. For the consumer, this is beneficial because they can receive their products in the comfort of their home and not waste their time around 3 to 4 hours in the market and invest it in more productive activities.

Currently, supermarkets are managed by big businessmen and wealthy families so they had more resources to modernize their establishments, offering better services and delivery services only work with them. This puts the markets at a great disadvantage with the supermarkets because the markets are managed by small businessmen and poor families who want to get ahead and do not have the same resources to generate more sales. In addition, they do not keep an accounting of the products they have and the money they receive, so they make losses and their businesses fail in the long run. At the same time, there are many informal traders. On the other hand, the buyers are made up of women, especially mothers, who spend about 3-4 hours in the markets. 

My little market will make life easier for consumers, people who shop at the markets because it facilitates shopping, delivery and saves time, which can be used in productive actions that generate income. It will also have an impact on the merchants by helping them to have quick sales, profit counting and organization of their products thus avoiding unnecessary orders and loss of money, as well as with the Tuck Tuck drivers, it facilitates the customers and the counting of their profits.

They are mainly people from poor communities, made up of small business owners, mothers who shop and waste time in the markets, and Tuck Tuck Tuck drivers who work every day to support their families. As a team we believe that unlike supermarkets, markets have not developed, there are many processes that have not been digitized and it is important to help them generate more sales. 

The first step we took was to visualize the problematic situation of our community (Cono Sur and Cono Norte) taking into account some of our experiences, the result we obtained was that in the markets the agglomeration of people was evident, either before or during the SARS pandemic -COV, making it impossible to mobilize people, the rapid purchase of products and effective time management, in turn, we saw the poor organization of traders in the purchase and sale of their products, and counting income, as well as poor public transport. To ensure, confirm and provide a solution to our problematic situation, the steps of Design Thinking were carried out: Phase empathize, the formulation of the challenge was carried out and the Interview Technique was tested, in which different questions were asked to the users. The Define Phase, in which the Empathy Map and the Point of View Technique (POV) were used; Ideation Phase, the Di Vinci Technique was used to find out what the solution would be; Prototype Phase, the application was made and finally the Evaluation Phase, where the prototype was tested with the users, with good results.

The development stage we selected is the prototype stage; since to reach this stage we have made use of the Design Thinking that allowed us to follow different stages such as: empathize, which allowed us to find a problem that afflicts our population (Northern and Southern Cone - Lima-Peru) and interact with people about this problem; define, which allowed us to have a clearer idea of the problem and the user's needs; to devise, helped us to select an alternative solution that meets the needs of the user, this idea is an app with delivery service that allows selling and buying local markets; then we continue with prototyping, for this we use the Marvel app application that facilitated us in the creation of the prototype of the app; finally we evaluate the application with a user test to 15 people, having the approval of all of them.

The technology we are going to use is existing software which is a Native Development (Android) that will be implemented in a new and original way for the creation of the app and in turn to satisfy the users. "Mi Mercadito" works as follows. First, the customer enters the application and immediately will have to register with your personal data and the place where you live, then you will get a map with the markets that are around, pressing one of them will leave photos of the market, the name of the market and the description of where this, if the customer wants to buy in that establishment will have to press the buy button, from there you will get the categories offered by the market as fruits, groceries, vegetables, meats, etc. If you click on fruits, for example, you will see the stalls that sell these products and the description of the seller, as well as the prices of each product and information about them. In order to purchase you will only have to click on the desired quantity and accept purchase, you will be transferred to the payment method and there you can choose the shipping method either pick up in-store or home delivery, if you want home delivery you will see the information of each Tuck Tuck driver and so you can choose your delivery driver for greater conformity.

The application this 2022 plans to serve the population of Lima-Peru specifically in the district of Villa El Salvador which are 200 000 (Two hundred thousand inhabitants), there it will be scaled to other busy districts of Lima as SJM, San Juan de Lurigancho, San Martin de Porres, VMT, etc, with the aim of serving for the moment 4 million people between youth and adults, discarding minors. When we see greater progress and acceptance by the population of Lima, "Mi Mercadito" will be implemented throughout Peru, since all departments and districts have local markets.

Currently, we are learning to use Adalo no-code platform to develop "Mi Mercadito", after that, the next year we want to raise funds to pay Play Store's membership and launch the application. This is a big step for our future company. Then, we will train entrepreneurs on how to use the application and how they can increase their sales through it. As well, we will train Tuck Tuck drivers to register in the application, and of course, they have to accomplish the requirement to be part of our company. Therefore the next year is so important to structure our company, make allies and implement our solution.

We will measure the progress and impact of "Mi Mercadito" in the market through:

• The number of orders placed per day, per week, and per month.
• The number of users that use our services.
• Recommendations in Play Store about our service.
• The number of downloads in the Play Store.
• Comments from people through social networks (Instagram, Instagram, Twitter, Twitter, etc.).
• District associations of tuck tuck tuck drivers who decide to work with our application.
• The number of orders placed per day, per week, and per month.

The barriers we have to achieve the goals we have for "Mi Mercadito" are the following: Financial; since not having it makes it impossible for us to hire programmers and technological materials that allow us to create the app, as well as hiring trained people to guide us properly in the process of developing "Mi Mercadito" and legality; since we are minors and it is very difficult to legally register the application in our country and our name.

We are in a unique position to deliver the solution and solve the problem because the context we have presented is our reality, we live in that situation, our parents buy in the markets, we have family who is small entrepreneurs and neighbors who are Tuck Tuck drivers. So the problem that we want to solve is in our environment.

Ariana worked in a small business in the market and she saw there is a bad administration of the products. For that reason, small businesses have profit losses. On the other hand, the markets are extremely crowded and in the middle of the pandemic, this is too dangerous. Also, this concerns us because our family members are at risk of contracting COVID-19. 

We are 16 years old girls who have the motivation to implement their solution in their community. We have knowledge about the business model, for example, Lean Canvas, and also we have developed our idea following the stages of Design Thinking. Additionally, we have participated in different Hackathons, so we have a high level of UX design and application prototype development. Currently, we are learning the no-code platform Adalo to develop Mi Mercadito and do the first test. 

Currently, we are not partnering with any organizations.

We improve the quality of life of women because most of our target audience are women, who constantly go to the market 3 times a week and waste about 3 to 4 hours a day. Those hours are so important because in that time they can do a productive activity and generate income. In addition, they are more exposed to contracting COVID-19 in the market or in crowded buses. 

We will use the Pozen Social Innovation Award to register Mi Mercadito as a company, rent a Mi Mercadito office with computers, hire programmers and administrators, pay application and advertising costs.