A fabulous new app for the social butterfly
Drinqsmart, an app created by Ashuveen Bhadal and Lukas Linsbichler, has the potential to be revolutionary. It’s social media, instant messenger, map, search engine and loyalty card all in one. Most important, however, is the fact that it’ll make sure you get a cocktail with friends at the end of a hard working day. How fabulous, no?
In a world where our lives increasingly take place online, Drinqsmart aims to use the technology we’re so dependent on to bring us back together in real life. It allows you to see which of your friends are free for a drink, where they are, and whether they’re up for a big night or a laid back glass of wine. By sharing this information with your own exclusive circle of friends, you can then discover new nearby venues to meet at.
Sure, you could send round a text if you wanted, but trying to negotiate and satisfy the needs of all your friends quickly becomes tedious and time-consuming. Planning a night out is yet another chore to add to your already long to-do list and 9-to-5 duties, and if there’s one thing the city professional doesn’t have, it’s time.
Even if by some miracle you decided on a time and place to meet, you’d still have to use Google Maps to find out how to get there, log on to Facebook to tell all your other friends where you’ll be, and scan the internet for 2-for-1 voucher codes. Post-work drinks are only that if you’ve actually had time to get work done during the day!
Enter Drinqsmart, the perfect amalgamation of everything you could possibly need to get your night started all in one place, absolutely stress-free. Ashuveen and Lukas admit that they were probably unintentionally inspired by the way other popular social media and timesaving apps work, but they also made a conscious decision to stick to classic design concepts so that they would be immediately intuitive to their tech-savvy users.
The main focus of Drinqsmart is spontaneous meetings – seizing the now, making the most of those precious few hours after work. The app’s founders explain that in busy cities like London you’ve already met the basic requirements needed to live, and are now seeking real value in our lives: ‘that value is quite often to do with personal relationships’. Ashuveen and Lukas concede that it’s not possible to sacrifice how hard you work in this fast-paced city if you want a successful career, but you shouldn’t have to sacrifice how hard you play either. ‘With Drinqsmart you can keep working hard but also use any spare time to share valuable moments with friends, getting that quick drink after work or over lunch’.
There are a number of ways to connect with friends (those Drinqsmart calls your ‘going out’ circle) within the app: phonebook contacts, email, Facebook, and even face-to-face at the bar by scanning QR codes. Long gone are the days when you’d meet a girl in the queue for the ladies, instantly become BFFs, but then never see her again. Scanning her phone and connecting on Drinqsmart could be the beginning of a beautiful new friendship. When you part ways on leaving the bathroom you can continue your conversation via the chat feature. But don’t worry, all chats on Drinqsmart are erased at the end of the night so you don’t have to worry about permanent evidence of the embarrassing things your tipsy self said.
This innovative new app is also a fantastic way to discover your new favourite bar and hidden gems you never knew about. By allowing you to search for venues based on your interests, and by only featuring venues that have a stylish or unique positioning in the market, using Drinqsmart guarantees that you will a) definitely have an absolutely fabulous night, and b) only receive promotions from venues that sell the type of products you value. An ice cold Sauvignon, perhaps.
Ashuveen and Lukas claim that they won’t measure success through downloads or venue partners. Their marker of success is less tangible, although perhaps infinitely more powerful: ‘the day that Londoners use the app “every time they want to go out, and as a result have better social relationships”, just like they use Facebook to “see what their friends are up to and to stay in touch” is the day we’re a real success’.
What started 18 months ago as a small spark of an idea, has rapidly transformed in to a ground-breaking app that will set the city ablaze.
