Seva
सेवाRepairs & trades
Most of a village's service capacity is people, not shops
The man who wires houses in the evening and has no signboard. The retired teacher who tutors. The woman who cooks for functions. None of them would ever register as a shop, and between them they are most of what a village can actually get done — so Seva holds them beside the shops that do call-outs, in one list.
How it works
Start to doorstep
- 1
Search the trade, not the shop
A household looking for someone to fix the wiring finds the electrical shop that does call-outs and the man two doors down, in the same list. Two taxonomies would have meant two searches and a household deciding which to trust.
- 2
Reach them the way these jobs are actually arranged
A phone call, mostly. The directory puts each trade one tap from one, and the request-and-complete record sits behind it for the jobs that need one.
- 3
Or ask for somebody to come along
An errand is the other half: the bank, the block office, a form that has to be submitted in person. It is quoted by the hour and served by a driver who has been accredited for it, because going along with somebody is not the same job as carrying a sack.
- 4
Completed, and recorded
The work is marked done and the record stays with the household and the provider. Nothing is skimmed off it.
What is different
The part we got wrong first
- A person can be listed, not only a business
- The same trade taxonomy as the shops, so one search finds both
- Accompanied errands, priced by the hour, with an accredited driver
- A trade nobody in the block covers is shown empty rather than hidden
How we know
A request here is not an order. It carries no bill, no delivery fee and no commission, and the status machine is four states long and stops at completed. The MVP establishes the concept without a subscription economy behind it — and money arriving later should not have to unpick a system built around its absence.
For the tradesperson
The other side of the transaction
A marketplace that only works for the buyer is a subsidy with a logo. Every service was designed from the seller's constraints first — what they can realistically promise, and what they must not be asked to change.
- ✓Listed without a shop, a signboard or a registration
- ✓Found by the trade a household actually searches for
- ✓A credential checked by hand where there is one to check
- ✓No commission on work arranged through the directory
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