Policemen and Passport applicants can sigh a relief as four overcrowded police stations in Andheri gets a token vending machines

by Suman Gupta

Mumbai: Passport applicants in the Andheri neighbourhood, as is typical, must wait in massive queues and endure unnecessary delays when having their passports validated at the Andheri Police Station. The police officers were having problems handling the crowd as well, and there was no mechanism to handle the crowd of applicants until today.

This became a matter of concern, and an Andheri resident and CEO of a bootstrapped start-up Promodome Digital, Vivek Kataruka , couldn’t stand the predicament of passport applicants and police officers from these police stations, who had to go through a gruelling process merely to get their passports verified. Twice Kataruka had to wait for a longer time to get his passport verified in one of the Andheri Police stations, felt compelled to do something useful to help the police and the applicants save time, money, and make this experience more convenient for the majority of them. He came up with the brilliant idea of installing a Token ticket vending machine, which he felt would be the greatest solution for everyone. Four token vending machines have been installed in each of the police stations in Andheri east.

The ease and speed with which the police verification protocol may be completed would be a huge help to everyone. It would primarily serve as a time saver and a de-escalation of stress, which everyone experiences while functioning at a police station. Vivek Kataruka, CEO and Founder of Promodome, added to the excitement and satisfaction of being a part of this support for this cause and happy that this inspiration and guided effort is seeing the light of day, expressed “Being an entrepreneur, you instinctively become a problem solver. When you see a gap in supply and demand, your mind automatically starts looking for ways to bridge that gap. I went to the MIDC police station for my passport verification when I saw the hassle the policemen and the visitors in the station had to face to maintain order as no one knew when their turn would come. People kept pestering the officers for more information and I just couldn’t imagine being able to work properly if someone kept knocking on my door every 5 minutes. That’s when the idea struck me”

To begin with, the four police stations namely Andheri Police station, MIDC Police station, Powai Police station and Sakinaka Police station that come under zone 10 have been installed with the ticket vending token machine by Promodome Digital. As they develop financial strength, the Promodome team is sure that they will reach out to more police stations in the coming days to install more of these ticket vending machines. Kataruka added when asked about his aspirations. “The ticket vending machines will help the police officers better manage the applicants and save a chunk of their time and energy. It’s a novel initiative that will increase the efficiency of police stations and share the load of policemen managing the station.”

About: Promodome Digital , Co-founded by Tuushaar Chopra and Vivek Kataruka is a digital marketing agency based in JB Nagar, Andheri, which started amid the biggest socio-economic crisis, the covid pandemic. From a handful of employees driven to prove themselves in 2020, we are now a proud agency with more than 45 members dedicated to bolstering our client’s social presence and helping them craft their digital identity across platforms.