[App Fridays] GaadiWala - Indian Car and Bike Prices In Your Pocket

Today's app on App Fridays is one of many apps that are known to have come out of India. Utility apps, which perform one function and one function only. Gaadiwala will give you prices of Indian cars and bikes and it does that only. Gaadiwala fetches data from a comprehensive database of cars and bikes and their price information. Being a car and bike enthusiast, there were models of cars that I hadn't even heard of! But is this really something that

you will keep after a download? Read on to find out -Function 

The function is single point. Search for makes of cars and bikes and it will give you their prices. You can search for cars and bikes by the company make and also by model. A key part of this app is that it gives you a comprehensive list of places in India where you can buy the car or bike from. Along with major metropolitan cities, it also has tier 2 and tier 3 cities, which I personally found impressive.

Once searched, the app gives you a list of cars and their various makes with corresponding prices. The app does nothing else.

Effectiveness 

The app performs it single function pretty well barring a few issues. Over any internet connection, you usually wouldn't find any glitch at all. However, we did put it through its paces and here are some things that stood out for us and sometimes, broke the app -

1. The app doesn't have 'every' car make. BMW, Audi for starters weren't on it. This might seem trivial, but most users of the app might not be using the app to buy a car. In the app's current limited capacity, having these makes and their costs can serve as a source of information and amusement for users.
2. Some makes were listed by didn't have any pricing information on them. We couldn't get any pricing information for Ford cars.
3. Some entries, like the one in Mahindra had model numbers listed which I think even people from Mahindra would have a tough time identifying
4. Some listed makes and companies didn't have any data on it. In the case of Mitsubishi, the app not only didn't return any results, it force closed. Fiat is another example.

Going by the consistency of content and effectiveness, Gaadiwaala is a hobby app, at best. 

UI and UX 

There isn't anything great about the app's looks, but they have approached it with a minimalistic mindset, which is good. The app doesn't feel cluttered, white and blue are not harsh on the eyes and the lists are well spaced out. The app is light on the phone and did not show much difference in the way it feels across devices.

From a user experience perspective, the time on the app is going to be very, very limited. The only place where Gaadiwala can improve currently is in making search functions execute from the keyboard itself. Users are having to click the 'get list' button to search.

What we hope for

I sincerely hope more features are added to Gaadiwala. At the moment, the one thing that this app has going for is is that there is only one other app on the android market, CarWale, that is doing what Gaadiwala is trying to do. And CarWale beats it by miles. Having said that, when you make a mobile app, you must make use of mobility and features specific to a smartphone to make a compelling use case for users. Neither app, for example, uses social gamification concepts which will drive engagement on the app.

These kind of apps could have some sort of mileage challenge game which works on GPS and the car in the highest mileage in the class will win the game. This is just one example and many such things can be implemented in Gaadiwala more easily because of its early stage than the other more established apps, which are just an app view of information scraped from the web.What we didn't like 

It is a good effort no doubt, but it isn't a complete app by any means. As users, we could break the app at multiple instances, which isn't a good thing. Gaadiwala needs to be tested well enough before being pushed out.

The app could definitely do with a lot more features and they have a very unique opportunity to add the right kind of features because of the nascent stage of the app, which we sincerely hope they do. We have purposely left out our battery report for the app due to its limited functionality.

Last Words

Gaadiwala is a useful app for someone who's going to buy a car. But app development has to be a metrics driven process, and if that had been so, it would have been apparent that all smartphone users won't be buying a car in the near future. The one's who are going to be doing so will either look up the internet or ask their friends.

However, this provides Gaadiwala with a unique opportunity to gamify the app and derive reviews of the app from it, which no other app is doing. This can only be done using a smartphone and Gaadiwala has a real opportunity in getting this done. We hope to hear from them soon with an app with added functions and features.

Buying an car sometime soon? Download Gaadiwala.