Building a house? Home in on this app

More often than not, home builders who are clueless about the rates and grades of the building raw materials, tend to rely heavily on the contractor, who may or might not quote appropriate prices. This problem could soon be fixed.

To suit the convenience of home builders in the state, the Mines and Geology department will shortly launch a mobile application (App), where they will have direct access to rates, grades, lease (survey number) and details of where major construction materials are available.

The App is being developed at a cost of Rs 5 lakh.

The department will share contact numbers of crushers and quarries, which will be available at the click of a button. The user can download the App from Google Play Store and look up information on the location and pricing of construction material like river sand, M-Sand, murram (caley material), jelly (gravel), granite and burnt bricks.

The special feature of this App, which is being developed in-house, is that it does not require Internet connection once it is downloaded on to the device. Prasanna Kumar N S, director, Mines and Geology, told DH that the department decided to develop the App to give homebuyers direct access to raw materials and to ensure that they got quality material at appropriate rates.

“If home builders want to buy sand for instance, they have to resort to oral enquiries or depend on contractors. They don’t have exact information on the source of the material.

Also, once the contractor comes into the picture, the rates quoted by him is not easily verifiable. Now, buyers will not only be able to source the raw material from the nearest crusher or quarry, they will also have first-hand information on the quality and appropriate rates, which they can counter-check, and not get cheated. The department will mention parameters against each quarry lease to ascertain the quality of the raw material,” he said.

The department will link around 1,200 crushers and nearly 3,000 quarries with the buyers. The buyer can directly source the raw material, which will be delivered to his/her doorstep, Kumar said. The department, however, will not link iron and steel.

Mineral wealth

As Karnataka is rich in minerals, especially minor minerals, the department wants to showcase the same through this App.

“Karnataka produces around 31 minerals including quartz, bauxite, mica, corundum. Unfortunately people are not even aware of them. We want to showcase these minerals, especially, specified minor minerals like granite. We have high quality granite in Karnataka. For instance, Chamarajanagar, which produces the best quality black granite, is also home to pink, yellow and grey granite,” he added.