“We began working on the app in the last week of November and released it on last Thursday,” says 28-year-old Lawate, adding, “I, along with Ashwin Date, Vishnu Pathare and Kirtikumar Pawar, worked on it. The idea for the app was simple. It is a very basic app that has only necessary information, which can be accessed by anyone with a smartphone.
We want to see the response this year.”
Currently, along with the basic information such as details about the artistes, venue map and schedules, the app also displays information regarding the sponsors and the ticket sale points for the festival.
As far as numbers go, there have been 15 downloads for the Android version and 150 for the web application so far. Lawate who graduated as a mechanical engineer in 2006 from the Shahu College started his company during his college days. While they primarily work on webpage and website designing, their mobile application team has created the content for this particular app.
“Next year we plan to take it further,” says Date, adding, “among others things, there will be a social network integration in the app. Right from Facebook, where one can upload live images and videos to even Twitter, where people can tweet with a Sawai hashtag, it will all be built into it. People will even be able to link to a Facebook page where they will know instantly who all are going for the event.”
The app won’t be available on the iTunes store, as Lawate mentions that Apple takes a minimum of 15 days to verify and release an app on their store. “The app will continue to be free of course,” says Lawate, adding, “but what will change is every year the user will be able to automatically update the festival details and information about it without any glitch. There is no sense making it a paid app though we have spent Rs 45,000 to develop it. Just as the idea of the festival is to make the festival accessible for the common man, we too wish to do the same in our own way.”