Making opinions count

Social app

One will often find the common man grumbling about several issues. Social platforms, where people express subjective opinions, too play a role in only reigniting or refuelling the issue, making the situation worse.

So when the debate on intolerance started doing the rounds last year, Akshat Jain and Anuj Goel felt that technology could help in providing a solution to these issues, wherein objective opinion would be taken into account to help bring about change. And they came up with ‘Swipe’, a social interface, platform and app, that uses qualitative data to enable one to voice out their opinion over pertinent issues in society.

“Most of the times, change fails to happen at the ground level. We wanted to transform that and take public opinion to its logical conclusion. ‘Swipe’ facilitates sharing views and voting on social issues. The app aims at creating awareness and thus, bring a refreshing change in the society,” say the co-founders.

While Akshat has years of experience in leading product development, strategy and technology, Anuj has worked on some of the world’s most reputed brands and headed several leadership roles in technology, management operations, strategy development and implementation.

With the app, the user can learn, find and explore trending topics, voice out their opinion on a topic that interests them, participate in interesting discussions, submit new questions/ topics and know other Swipe user views. Users can key in their votes based on their preference. The user can also invite friends and family to vote by sharing questions.

The questions cater to topics like women safety, religious freedom, economic issues, human rights and inequality. There are things that impact one’s lives like education, urban planning, unemployment, environment, water scarcity, electricity cuts, employability, price hikes, soaring mercury levels, child rights, alcohol abuse, health, parenting and many others.

The app uses the further engagement method with the users and is not just a petition filing app. “‘Swipe’ wants to engage in constructive, rational and active discussion and break stereotypes to bring in change,” says the duo adding, “We analyse the data and extract interesting facts that may help bring the change. We work with NGOs, civil society organisations, media and the government who leverage the analysis results to change policies, laws, and spread awareness.

The analysis and expertise provided by us serve as early warning mechanisms and help NGOs start awareness campaigns and implement new programmes to bring positive change.”

And how is the app different from a survey? “It is a platform which gives equal importance to both sides of a coin. While many survey platforms focus on research on some topics and a small targeted sample size, ‘Swipe’ is accessible to everyone and provides a quantified opinion with an analytical approach on a variety of issues.”

Launched in English, this app is looking at being introduced in 4 different languages namely Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam.