How we launched a new feature for our community in 24 hours during the Corona induced indoor isolation

Hello Everyone, I am Ishan, co-founder of Impact App. And we are a team of 17 missionaries creating a community of change-makers.

As I am writing this, the Corona-infected count has crossed 2,50,000 world wide, and is 309 in my country, India. Luckily for us, it has taken time for the virus to affect our country but the crucial time is now. We are in phase 2 where the spread will be through local transmission from infected persons. And being a country of 1.3 Billion people, moving to stage 3 which is community transmission would be scary. To add to that, this is the exact time when work from homes are getting deployed in companies and people are travelling their homes. This increases the chances of the virus spreading from tier-1 cities of India like Mumbai, Pune, Delhi to towns and villages where the current migration is happening — live.

On that count, our Government and our authorities have also taken some really good measures real soon. From shutting down international flights, to boosting up primary healthcare and covid testing centres. Day before yesterday, India’s prime minister also announced a nationwide Janata Curfew (people’s self-put curfew), tomorrow 22nd March from 7 AM to 9 PM.

Now, you’d be wondering, how does it all relate to the headline. So here goes.

Impact is a fitness plus kindness app where every kilometer walked or jogged raises money for a social cause. Our community sweats, our corporate sponsors match their effort with money, which our NGO partners use to create on ground impact. Consider us as a Nike Run, or a Strava type of app with a social purpose. Till date, 500K change-makers have covered 40 Million kilometres to raise more than Rs. 300 Mn for various social projects across the world.

So about 50% of our community uses our app for their daily morning or evening walks or jogs — to track their kilometres, and contribute to a cause with their workout. The sudden shift in people’s lifestyles understandably took a hit on our outdoor workout numbers. The number of outdoor walks and jogs dropped by over 10% over that last couple of weeks. People living more indoors affected activity on our app inversely.

On Thursday, ie. day before yesterday, we were all watching Mr. Narendra Modi ji’s speech at 8PM where he urged everyone to seriously practice social distancing and announced The Janata Curfew for coming Sunday.

The following morning, our internal Whatsapp group started off early in the morning buzzing with messages, ideas and discussions on something new we wanted to build for our community. The core idea (which came from Sagar, one of our android developer) was that if people are moving indoors, and practicing social distancing, Impact App can also move indoors with them.

We were going to make a step-first indoor tracking feature live, to compliment our GPS first outdoor workout feature for our community.

Within 3 hours since initial discussion, we decided to evolve our existing product offering to include a new feature called as ‘Indoor Workout’ for our community so that our users can continue to take care of their health even during quarantine!

What we also decided was that we will time it with Janata Curfew and make the feature live by Sunday morning. When the meeting was over, we had exactly 42 hours and 42 minutes to get it Done.

What followed from there was the most agile, extremely intense, highly productive performance from the whole team. Each one of us rallied together to develop, ideate, test, iterate, and make this feature ready for our community in less than 2 days. What we thought would make it even tougher was that we were all already working remotely. So the initial inertia was on the confidence on speed of communication. But the cause was greater.

As of now, it is 7.17 PM on Saturday, and we are already live!

I don’t know exactly how, but we all managed to plan, ideate, iterate, and test for the launch of the indoors feature in about 24 hours. And for me, that’s Agile Building!

I and my cofounders have been in the field of technology for over 10 years. But never ever have we witnessed such lightening speed of building, such high levels of team-work and responsibility, and such strong collaboration anywhere before.

Like many startup founders, I was worried about how the sudden change and the new lifestyle is going to affect our team’s culture, our startup’s sync, and our productivity. But when push came to shove, our dream team delivered. And they delivered fast, robust, and in style.

For those of you who are already Impact’s community members, all you need to do is update your app! And for those who don’t have the app, you can install Impact from PlayStore or AppStore.

I know it can be emotionally frustrating to be at home for days. Being an extrovert, not meeting anyone is very tough for folks like me. It also takes a toll on your physical and mental health.

But Social Distancing is the Need of the Hour.

Let’s turn things around and make this experience a little lighter for everyone. To beat the loneliness, take part in the #QuarantineStepsChallenge on Impact App with the loving and caring community of our change-makers. Stay fit by tracking your steps inside your homes. #WalkFromHome #StayFitIndoors #QuarantineStepsChallenge #GetFit #DoGood #IndoorStepTracking

Get fit. Do good. For the time being, from your homes!