The personal assistant

24 hours, this is the average length of day in most of the world. If you are not living in polar areas, there is good chance that you have only this 24 hours to complete your daily works. It's the same length for all, rich/poor, white/black, S/he. But some of us utilize these 24 hours better than others. There are two ways you can maximise your day. The tougher way- You can manage your time to invest more time on productive works.

For those who are not willing to do the time rationing or hate the word discipline, for them, there is a way out! Hire a personal assistant! The job of personal assistant is to help you with your personal works. You can just relax while your assistant is doing all the chores for you. But you need to pay hefty salary to secretary, right? Wrong!

About a year back I wrote about Natasha by hike, a mindless personal assistant bot. It was good for just a few common things. You can read about her here. Today I am talking about a personal assistant app that is actually run by human. It's called Haptik. I stumbled upon this app a few weeks ago. Using it constantly now and it actually frees up considerable amount of time from my schedule! The best thing, you get all these for free.

Haptik has a polished UI! It divides it's content under 8 heading. Reminder- You can ask your personal assistant to remind about anything and every thing here. At recharge tab, you get to recharge your Mobile, DTH etc. They also give you coupon codes for other websites. Looking for an eatery at new place, ask it in nearby tab! Travel options, places of interest, all for you under travel tab. Food, movies, Shopping, utilities are some other useful tabs.

I am using this app for few weeks and I highly appreciate it's performance. I would love to recommend it to you. You can download it here.

Here are some screen shots from haptik.

The welcome screen

Sign in screen: Only google sign in allowed

Catagories at a glance 

Smart new way to book air ticket

Need a coupon? Ask your assistant!

Here is a video that summerises the performance of Haptik!

Disclaimer: Thia blog is in no way affiliated to Haptik. It's not a sponsored post. If you like my blog, please revisit. Thanks for your time.

Offf Flipcart..

In India, online shopping is synonymous to Flipcart. With 44% of market share, flipcart is undisputed leader on the board. Second place is occupied by Snapdeal with 32% and amazon is on third position with 15% market share. Report says that flipcart is not yet making any profits yet as they are more concerned about expanding their business. It's probably first time in modern India, a "Make in India" company is kicking the ass.

Market share of major e-retailers. Image curtsy: Business Standard

All these stuff made me very happy once. As I live in the North east where most companies don't establish their show rooms as this is not profitable for them, could get my hands on hands on latest tech by ordering them online. First few days were euphoric. Every thing was delivered and every damn thing was good. I remember prebooking and buying Revolution 2020 from flipcart. There were shops who used to order LCD TVs (they were in fashion then) and resale them for some profit.

But as the time passed, flipcart started curtailing products that were delivered in north east (and some areas in UP, Bihar too). The share of not-shippable products increased with time, at  some point even less than 20% products of 15Mn strong inventory of flipcart became not-shippable.

I remember, Motorola unvailed their flagship phone Moto E, G and X just after it was taken over by google. It was only available on flipcart. That time flipcart had a policy of not delivering products costing more than 10,000 rupee in north east. I was not able to procure the Moto G phone I wanted badly, rather I need to settle with a Micromax HD mobile.


Things have moved a bit forward in last few days, Flipcart increased the quantum of products shippable to North-East. I heard this info from my friends. So when I had to buy a pair of shoes few days back, I went streight to the play store and downloaded the flipcart app (flipcart is not accecible from mobile without app). I went to the shoes section and after say half an hour of scanning, I sattled on a pair of shoes and went on to order that. As I entered my pin code, BANG! It was not available! The second choice, not available. Third, forth nopz.. not available.

This is when I tried to buy Moto X today.

With a broken heart, I just casually copied the product name and searched it on snap deal, the product was there. I entered the PIN code. Yes, it was available. Ordered it from snapdeal and recived the curier after around 10 days. It was available after just 7days, but due to neglect on part of bluedart the delivery was delayed. At Amazone too, the product was available and was shippable.

I am not advocating for any perticular brand here, I am just putting forward the plight of people from Agartala and the North-East. We too have the same right as the people from main land of India to shop products online and get good deals. If flipcart is not willing to do so, let them declare this openly that they wont deliver to North-East. We have other online retailers to choose from. It's a request to my readers, kindly put pressure on flipcart authorities..

Oh, Natasha!!!

The latest update of Hike (Make in India answer to whatsapp) included 2 new features. One among them was very much awaited, yes, I am talking about the voice call capability. Though it's performance on 2g network below par, it is promising. Another feature was also added which didn't get very much hype. It's the new robo-chat system named as Natasha.

I am confused if they introduced her to make hike a funny app or they really wanted to deliver. Natasha is able to answer questions correctly only when asked in specific format provided like #weather <place name> for weather update, #dict <word> to find out the meaning of a specific word which otherwise you can easily google. Apart from this, she is just a dumb robo and surprisingly she gladly accepts it. I think she is of help only when your time settings are messed up and there is no one to ask time. But again, you can google it. Below are some screenshots of funny chat with her..