By Mackenzie Ford. Excerpted from an article originally published in The TORCH magazine.
Some UVic-made apps save lives, some save time—and others enhance our leisure hours. Here are just a few of the notable apps made on campus or by members of the UVic community.
APP: DragonPass
CREATOR: Jane Zhu, MBA ’05, and Cai Kehui
WHAT IS IT? DragonPass is a platform for travellers to access different services at airports and railway stations, saving time for passengers and creating a more enjoyable travel experience.
WHY WE NEED IT: This company can tell you what services are available in each airport or railway station you visit. It eliminates the need to walk through each and every airport wing to find the service or amenity you need.
WHO WILL USE IT? Everyone who travels.
“DragonPass is a consumer platform offering extensive services at airports and high-speed railway stations, connecting the offline services scattered around the world and providing passengers with a premium travel experience. Through years of accumulation, our service network covers 500 airports and high-speed railway stations in over 130 countries worldwide, accessing the most scarce and unique resources in the travel industry. Through our innovative platform and mobile solutions, DragonPass serves over 28-million members worldwide and provides a suite of services including lounge access, airport restaurant programs, limousine and Meet & Greet services and so on.”
– Jane Zhu
LEARN MORE: en.dragonpass.com.cn
APP: FreshWorks Studio
CREATORS: Samarth Mod, MBA ’15, and Rohit Boolchandani, MBA ’14
WHAT IS IT? FreshWorks Studio is an award-winning firm that designs and develops elegant and highly functional mobile, web, blockchain and AI applications.
WHY WE NEED IT: Software isn’t a one-size-fits-all product anymore. Our goal is to create extraordinary experiences utilizing the latest technologies. Creating apps that are custom-built specifically for your needs and challenges will make your organization more successful.
WHO WILL USE IT? We work with anyone from Fortune 500 companies, enterprises, non-profits, entrepreneurs to the public sector.
“When Rohit and I came to Victoria, still reeling from culture shock and with no network yet, we thought we would just be going to work for some tech company after finishing our MBAs at UVic. We always had a desire to do something different and wanted to have a positive impact on the community and society. We saw an opportunity to bridge the gap between technology and business with our education and experience in programming. We initially started by developing our own apps but realized a significant opportunity in developing apps for other businesses whose core business wasn’t IT.”
– Samarth Mod
LEARN MORE: freshworks.io
APP: Medimap (began as a website but recently launched as an app).
CREATOR: Blake Adam, BCom ‘11
WHAT IS IT? Medimap provides easy access to wait times at walk-in medical clinics in your community to help you find same-day access to care. You can then pick one and check in online.
WHY WE NEED IT: It reduces the inconvenience of long waits at a walk-in clinic. WHO WILL USE IT? Patients of walk-in clinics.
“My co-founder [Jonathan Clark] and I had experienced the frustrations of spending hours in the clinic waiting room with other sick people, and we couldn’t believe that there wasn’t an online resource where we could look up wait times at walk-in clinics in our community. It seemed like a really simple solution that could help a lot of people get access to care.”
– Blake Adam
LEARN MORE: medimap.ca
