Mumbai: Vasai siblings’ vaccine portal adds to arsenal in fight to book slots

Abhishek Gharat and Prathamesh Gharat

Amid the continuing race to secure vaccine slots, help has arrived in the form of a new portal developed by two siblings from Vasai. Their technology not only helps filter centres as per location but also alerts users whenever slots open in relevant vaccination centres.

The user interface of AutoVacSAC

Booking a vaccine slot has become one of the many sources of stress for citizens amid the pandemic. Thanks to the severe shortage in vaccines, booking slots is a daily struggle for lakhs of citizens, especially if they belong to the 18-44 years category, for which there are very few options.

So if you are missing your vaccine slot booking by just a few seconds, AutoVacSAC might be the solution. Brothers Prathamesh and Abhishek Gharat, who run the start-up KraftPikel, developed Automatic Vaccination Slot Availability Checker - codenamed - AutoVAcSAC. By providing alerts for preferred centres, the tech-program provides people with a head start in the process. The objective is to help citizens amid haphazard slot opening times.

Also Read: Centre opens walk-ins for all, but where are the vaccines?

"AutoVacSAC (https://kraftpixel.com/autovacsac) is a free-to-use browser-based tool developed for the common good. It searches, filters, auto-refreshes every five seconds and raises an alert when slots become available at centres in a particular district (pincode level precision available, unlike Telegram groups). It silently works on your PC or laptop browser. It does not need to be installed as an extension or an application," Abhishek said.

He added, "It does not ask for any personally identifiable information such as name, mobile number or email," explained Abhishek, adding that they have also developed a mobile application for the same. Abhishek shared an example where users are able to book their slots even in the wee hours as an alert is sent whenever slots open. The brothers have been in the field of website development for some time now and as a start-up, have engaged in philanthropic projects earlier too. They also developed a system for the Election Commission in 2019.