Under 25 Hack was a hack arranged in NUMA, Bangalore, during the first few weeks of 2016, January. It was a hiring hackathon and was the first one we'd been to.
Following the application we used to conserve mobile data, we saw lots of enterprise potential in being able to move around files in hyper-local storage, we improved on our previous product and branded it as BroGet, a file sharing system on steroids.
The intuition behind BroGet is that there are some files that have to be pushed to a user based on their geolocation, and we use hybrid storage to push those files, we aimed our demo at three product use cases, a Library management system, an Office document management system, and a Restaurant order management system. Ideally we'd have another use case for Home users but it won't be enterprise oriented, that version would be free for users to download, and use without restriction thereby promoting users to have the app installed on their phone.
In the case of the Library, you could imagine a Raspberry Pi based download box that is plugged into the LAN of the library, it could facilitate in pushing an e-book containing a catalog of all the present books in the library to the user's phone directly with the BroGet background app running on the phone ready to receive the e-book and give a generalized interface to the library, and provide the ability to download e-book variants of the books that have been borrowed in the library and are currently unavailable, all from the same hybrid local download box.
In the case of an Office, you could imagine an important document that had to be circulated to every new employee who joins the office, the document could be uploaded once to the hybrid local download box connected to the office's LAN connection and it would facilitate in sending the said document to every user as and when he/she joins the corporate network. This would allow the user to receive a document as and when he enters the geolocation of the office. Broadcast messages and overall public announcements could be distributed via BroGet as the app would automatically sync and update the most relevant document for the user to view based on the priority of the message.
In the case of a Restaurant order management system, we'd ideally have a Raspberry Pi based download box set up in the vicinity of the restaurant and have the menu uploaded as an e-book on the device. The menu/pricing and billing systems would co-exist in the same stack and would be kept offline, As a user enters the geolocation of the restaurant, the menu would be pushed from the download box to the app on the user's phone, and the background app would receive the file, and provide a generalized interface to order food from the application. BroGet in this case becomes a hyper-local terminal to the Restaurant's order management download box. A user can now order his menu from his phone and the order will be placed directly to the kitchen where a dumb terminal is made to receive the order from the download box and show list of menu items to prepare in the kitchen to the chef. A backend allows for orders to be entered through the cloud to ensure that home deliveries are also tracked.
In the home use case, it's pretty much like the app that allowed you to conserve mobile data, except this time you're buying the BroGet download box and you can have it download things for you, when you're not home.
The entire suite was enterprise oriented, and we had made presentations to showcase the different use cases, the judges were impressed with the demo that allowed them to sanction downloads using their mobile data. A good viewpoint a judge felt is that our team lacked the oratorical skills to showcase the full use of our product line. We were approached by a startup that wanted to work with us because they were working on a system with a hybrid cloud storage system and BroGet was relevant to them.
Being a hiring hackathon, first place was a job at a startup of your choice from the list of sponsors who had made this hack possible. We finished in second place and got an Indian Chrome-cast derivative called the Teevee, and a Raspberry Pi 2, plus tickets to witness the Startup India Conference, New Delhi.
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