Arun Kapur, a technocrat and the founder of the highly successful e-commerce site gadgetsguru.com, talks about his latest e-offering ‘OK Sir’. OK Sir is an app that aggregates and makes available over 300 daily need and emergency service providers like key makers, plumbers, peons, tutors, nurses to helicopter joyrides on a single click.
Excerpts from his vision of creating a single organised platform of assured employment for the unorganised sector, a secured and cost effective – standard pricing service platform for daily need services and providing a 24×7 platform with over 50,000 registered service providers.
Q. Tell us about OK Sir?
OK Sir is a daily need and emergency service based application that provides its users with over 300 services across categories and is available on the Android and IOS platforms. The objective was to create a solution platform for daily need services based on Effective costing, Skilled technicians and User safety model.
‘It is our endeavour to bring skilled technicians from the unorganised sector on a single platform, provide technical & soft skill trainings and create an avenue for assured employment for them’.
We have over 50,000 skilled workers in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane and Pune to provide round the clock the services to our application users.
Q. What inspired you to design a service app like OK Sir?
OK Sir is a by-product of my keen observation and people’s need for trusted and skilled technicians. There are many examples of how untrained technicians from the local marketplace have created more problems rather than being solution providers. And then there is the issue of safety & security of our family as there is no accountability and reliability with the unorganised sector.
OK Sir is a platform that has been created to provide solutions with respect to technician knowledge, standard pricing, service bouquet and user safety.
Q. With over 50,000 service provider’s from the unorganised sector, how do you ensure security of your app users?
Safety& Security of our app users is of utmost important to us. Prior to registering any technician with us, as a process, we do a complete background check and thorough police verification to ensure safety and security of our app users. We collect all legitimate KYC documents like Aadhar Card, PAN card and other address proofs, and issue every service Provider (OkMan) an ID card after verification.
Q. Why a bouquet of over 300 various services and not concentrate on one category like plumbing or electrician service?
Any platform that concentrates on a unique offering serves ‘No Value purpose’. Our market research has clearly indicated that consumers want one platform that provides a host of services with standard pricing. The biggest concerns that were highlighted in the research were the lack of trained technicians, pricing issues, service scheduling as per consumers need and the family security.
Our endeavour was to create a platform that encapsulates all these important factors and OK Sir is now becoming that preferred platform across our present territories.
Q. You have included a new feature ‘Free Service’, please elaborate?
OK Sir’s new ‘Free Service’ feature allows its registered users to avail one service like Fuse repair, Drainage cleaning, Nail drilling, peon service amongst others for absolutely free of cost and available in one hour from the time of registration.
Q. How does one avail your services?
To avail any service, the user must first download the app either from play store or app store, register with us and click on the service he/she wishes to avail and making online payment to purchase the credit coins depending upon the service required. This mitigates any monetary transaction between the user and the service technician.
The user can schedule services as per their convenience and once the service is completed, the user will have to rate their service experience before pressing the done button. The rating helps us to understand the end-user experience and also helps us to improve our service offerings and people presentation.
Q. What is the end-user who has bought credit coins from you not satisfied with your services?
Till date, we have not received any complaints from our user base but, if in case, any user is not satisfied with our services, we guarantee 100% refund of the credit coins purchased. Also, if any user wants to provide any insight on the services provided or register a complaint with us, we have a dedicated customer care number for that.
Q. What are your long-term plans?
‘OK Sir’ services are currently available in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane and Pune. In the coming quarters, the app services will be available Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and few other important tiers I & II metro’s.