Want a priest delivered to your doorstep? Toost is here to your rescue

Clothes, electronics, groceries and now get even a plumber delivered at your doorstep. Toost, a globally relevant, scalable and flexible business model, brings doctor, plumber, tailor, electrician, driver, carpenter, priest etc delivered to your home.

Google and Just Dial have brought local services online from yellow pages. But though they brought their names, number and addresses online, they failed to build a relationship of trust between the businesses and the customers.

“These are all linear searches. There was no social engagement. It was a hit and trial method. There is no way for me to find a trustworthy provider as I don’t know the guy whom I am calling. There is no guarantee of the quality of services. Also, they are available only in select cities. For a consumer we offer a local search platform that gets you trusted recommendations on businesses and service providers used by friends,” said Rohit Raghav, co-founder of Toost.

Hence though their competitors are mainly Google My Business and Just Dial, Rohit is confident of beating them in a short time.

What makes this one-stop-solution-for-all-services different than any other social platform is its globally unique technology innovation- phone graph that maps services with users and users with their friends. Using phone graph they have converted already available utility products into a social product.

“Local services have gone through a four stage revolution. From yellow pages it went to web and from web it went to mobile. From mobile, now everything is on-demand. By mimicking the real world in the digital world, we are defining how local search would work in this on-demand world,” he said.

Toost (Dutch), meaning toast in English, is a practical and beneficial option for mobile users that assures reliability as the decisions are based on trust and word of mouth instead of depending on the information from archaic local search market. At present, the app has over five million businesses and over 750 million unique people and business identities on the graph.

“It is totally driven by technology and do not rely on feet-on-street models,” added Rohit.

Talking about future plans he said they would soon launch new features like notifications and fun social facts like which plumber is trending in a particular locality.

“People find it very easy to use. You just have to type and have fun. It’s all auto completed,” said Rohit about the efficiency of this app.

Well, apart from all these technology and social features, the icon is another interesting aspect of this app.

“Our icon is actually four people standing in embrace. Infinity sign symbolises the infinite power of people’s network. Four colours show the diversity of the network. The brand colour is green, so green runs through that. It’s like Toost is connecting to all through this network,” he explained.

The app has already clocked over 1.2 million installs with a daily install rate of around 10,000 and is getting strong engagement from the users.

Some of the key features of the application are:

• Local business and people search

• Business ratings and reviews allowing users to claim control over service experience

• Social features like Activity Feeds, Ask a Friend, Shared Connections, Invite Friends, and Get Friends’ Recommendations

• Caller ID & call blocking to identify and block spamming businesses

• Business and people profiles that provide rich information for decision making

(Image credits: Phone Warrior)