A liquor sale queue management app in Kerala beat all other Indian food and drink apps in 2020

• BevQ, a virtual queue management app for bars and liquor stores, saw the highest growth in year-on-year sessions within Indian food and drink apps, according to App Annie.
• The app even beat the likes of Domino’s, which is used across India. Domino’s ranked second.
• Interestingly, the Chhattisgarh-state run CSMCL (Chhattisgarh State Marketing Corporation Limited) Online, which enabled the home-delivery of alcohol in the state, came in at the fifth position.

In May 2020, the state of Kerala announced that liquor shops would reopen after being shut for two months due to the coronavirus pandemic. Along with the announcement, a new app also surfaced, BevQ, a virtual queue management app to enforce social distancing.

And in the eight months that followed, the app, which works only in the state of Kerala, beat all other Indian food and drink apps in 2020 to see the highest growth in year-on-year sessions, according to the State of Mobile 2021 report by App Annie. The app even beat the likes of Domino’s, which is used all across India.

Interestingly, the Chhattisgarh-state run CSMCL (Chhattisgarh State Marketing Corporation Limited) Online, which enabled the home-delivery of alcohol in the state, came in at the fifth position.

Source: App Annie

“While use of food delivery apps often peaked near the beginning of the pandemic in most markets, India had an initial decline due to logistical impacts before rising again in the summer,” said the report.

BevQ was developed by the Kerala-based FairCode Technologies and was also one of the apps chosen by a committee chaired by the IT secretary and the Kerala Startup Mission. The app issues tokens and time slots for people to buy alcohol from bars and restaurants.

BevQ, which got over a lakh downloads within hours of its launch, found its place in the App Annie ranking even when bars and liquor stores in Kerala had opened only partially in May 2020 before being shut down again due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The stores across the state reopened only in December 2020.

However, the app has also been reported to have multiple technical glitches during its launch.


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