From video calling to doctor consultation – 5 apps that can take care of all your family’s needs

By Sachin Jaiswal, CEO and Co-Founder, Niki.ai

Ten years ago, Namdeo Deshpande, a 55-year-old hardware store owner from Alandi, would have had to take a 150 km bus ride to Satara to see his newly married daughter. Today, he picks up his smartphone, squints at the screen for a few seconds and a few taps later his oldest grandchild greets him through a WhatsApp video call. Technology has permeated our lives in ways that we couldn’t have imagined before. While Facebook and Whatsapp still remain the most popular apps among Indians, an increasing number of apps are coming up to enhance our lifestyle in myriad ways.

Here’s a list of five easy to use, new-age apps that can take care of all your family’s needs:

1. Duo: If you are looking for a safe, easy to use, high-quality video and voice calling app to stay in touch with your family, Duo by Google is all that and more. You can simply tap on a contact’s avatar to make voice or video calls on iOS and Android devices alike. The app’s low-light feature, also lets you enjoy video clarity even in poorly lit areas. It provides a consistent video quality by switching between your wifi and mobile data connections as it adapts to your internet bandwidth. With Duo, you have more control over the calls you receive as it shows a preview of real-time footage of the video-caller. The app may soon allow you to make group video calls, just like Hangouts does on your PC. It’s a must-try app to stay in touch with your family with just a tap!

2. Niki: Ever wanted someone else to take the load off and help you with all your household needs? Meet Niki, India’s first AI-powered conversational-bot that acts a virtual agent to fulfill all transactional needs for you and your family over a simple voice and chat interface. Whether you want to pay your monthly bills (electricity, phone, gas, DTH) get instant prepaid recharges, plan weekly movie nights with friends and family or just want to explore the best offers on food, drinks, salon and healthcare near you, Niki let’s you do it all! Not just this, you can even plan your family holidays by asking Niki to take care of your bus and hotel bookings. All you have to do is say, “Niki, book an AC bus from Mumbai to Pune on 25th January after 10 pm,” and Niki will understand the multiple instructions to give you results best suited to your requirements. The app is currently available in Hindi and is soon going to add multiple language capabilities so that you can just talk in your language and get things done. Try Niki today and save time, money and space of the hundred different booking apps on your phone.

3. Welike Status: This one is for people who are addicted to liking and sharing content on social media. Do you find stale and recycled forwards annoying? WeLike Status is a social platform that can help you get to the top of your WhatsApp status game. You can update your status with the latest trending videos with the app or breathe life into boring WhatsApp groups. The app has downloadable video content for WhatsApp status in 10+ Indian languages. The app has a wide variety of WhatsApp Status Videos and other trending/viral content that you can directly share on WhatsApp. Welike also serves as a platform for you to connect with your favorite celebrities. So if you’re someone who likes spending time talking on WhatsApp, this one is a must-try.

4. Voot: If you also spend a lot of time looking for what to watch on Tv and don’t get much, try Voot! It is a free video-streaming app that lets you watch TV serials, reality shows, music videos, Bollywood movies across Viacom18’s network channels. After a busy day, it is a great entertainment source for you and your family that you can either use to stream videos on the go or download videos to watch later. The app also has exclusive and dedicated content such as Voot Kids – where you can find cartoons from all over the world for the little ones at home. While Voot Originals features content for those who prefer watching less mainstream stories. With a comprehensive library across genres and languages, the app has something for each member of your family and should definitely be on your smart-phone.

5. Lybrate: Google search induced paranoia when looking up one’s health issues online has become all too common these days. Lucky for us, Lybrate is an app-based doctor consultation platform that puts an end to unnecessary stress and anxiety by letting users consult doctors anonymously and free of cost to get helpful answers within a few minutes. You can use the app to connect with over one lakh doctors across 30 Indian cities. Apart from instant online consultation, the app also lets you book appointments for clinic visits and provides home-pickup of samples for lab tests. It also assists you in managing your medical records better by saving your prescriptions and reports to the cloud.

While this list covers only five of these super useful apps, perfect for your family needs, an increasing number of tech companies are building apps with simpler interfaces and multilingual capabilities to make everyday tasks easier and technology accessible to all Indians. If you are reading this and you’re a smartphone user, try these apps and get more done with your smartphone!