Kerala's much-touted queue management app for booze sale, BevQ, finally made its appearance on Google's Play Store late on Wednesday night, but glitches remained just less than two hours ahead of the planned resumption of liquor sale in the state.
Though users who searched BevQ on Play Store could not trace it, they managed to initiate the download by clicking on this link.
However, searches with the keyword ksbcvirtualq listed the app, but in third position. Apps by private companies took the first two slots.
Liquor sale began at 9 am from bars, beer parlours, BEVCO and Consumerfed outlets in the state. The BevQ app provides 15-minute slots for buying booze from a specified outlet near your location.
To purchase liquor, one need to book a slot in the virtual queue through the BevQ app.
Users will be prompted to enter their PIN code, name and phone number for the issuing of a token. The token, which includes a QR code, can be submitted at the prescribed counter during the time specified to buy the booze.
The app was developed to ensure that social distancing norms are followed at these outlets in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak.
Only five persons will be lining up before the counter at any given time and only 50 people will be served from one counter in an hour, officials told ManoramaNews on Wednesday. Initially, 4.8 lakh tokens will be issued each day.
The state had put shutters on bars on March 23 and closed BEVCO outlets on March 25 after the first phase of lockdown kicked in.
More than one lakh users downloaded the app in seven hours from Play Store, though the app is not still directly traceable with a simple Bev Q search.
This is the third iteration or the version of BevQ since the successful test. Some technical experts say the glitches like failure to get One-Time Password (OTP) could be due to overload.
Many users, who managed to download the app, complained they were not able to complete the installation process as they failed to get the One Time Password.
Irked users then pounded the app with a low rating of 1 after vain attempts to install it. At 12 am on Thursday, the user rating of BevQ plunged to 2.7 from the initial 4-plus. More than 4,200 users had rated the app until that time. By 7:20 am Thursday, over 8,700 had rated the app but the overall rating remained at 2.5, which means the negative rating trend is persisting.
Google may downgrade apps that persistently receive negative reviews, making it harder to be discovered by new users even by search.
The seamless functioning of the app will be a vital factor for the success of resumption of liquor sale by enforcing social distancing norms and avoiding crowdsourcing.
The much-awaited app's Play Store foray will also mean booze gets into fringes of an e-commerce retail play in God's Own Country along with groceries and other essential and non-essential items, although home delivery is ruled out for now.
The test-run of the BevQ app was done following Google's nod earlier this week. The app was developed by Kochi-based Faircode Technologies.
The early-access version of the app for developers, used exclusively for testing purposes, was downloaded by 20,000 within 2-minutes on Wednesday when it was made available.
In the course of the prolonged wait for BevQ's Play Store line up, netizens from Kerala even pounded an unverified Facebook profile page of Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google.
The flurry of messages was mostly in the nature of requests for a quick nod to BevQ's Google Play Store foray.
Liquor sales account for a major chunk of cash-strapped Kerala's revenue, with sales worth over Rs 14,500 crore in the last fiscal. The state has one of the highest per capita consumption of liquor in the country.
