Once upon a time, I was a college student whose departments used WhatsApp groups for the dissemination of information. These groups became extremely useful during examination periods because exams times could be changed within a moment’s notice. Being the class prefect’s duty to inform all students of these changes, what better way to do so than to post a single message in these designated WhatsApp groups. These group chats consisted all members of the class and unfortunately, would be used by disgruntled students to express their displeasure at the changes.
This meant two things: Being offline for a while would result in over 500 unread messages awaiting your return. The constant dilemma: You either sift through the several unread messages looking for probable announcements you missed out on or choose to ignore these unread messages with your fingers crossed, hoping no significant changes had been made to your exam/class schedules.
Obviously, none of the options from the dilemma were favorable for a student trying to study for an exam. Therefore, I set out to build a solution to a problem that I was definitely not experiencing alone.
‘Chanl’ was born.
I have spent the last year tweaking, turning, typing, changing, deleting, restarting and piecing together fragments of code hoping to create a viable prototype. It wasn’t until I shared my thoughts on Chanl with Philip that it became evident how wrong my approach had been. Philip was soon to be my co-founder and CTO, but most of all my friend and partner in crime. With him joining my mission, we set about to plan and execute this app and make it the seamless experience you shall hopefully enjoy.