The problem Subswap solves

With the advent of e-commerce and multiple UPI-based payment apps, there has been a proliferation of Coupons that the brands have been sending out to entice users to their platform. As such, a lot of these coupons generally go to waste as a vast majority of the population do not use them. While this creates friction for the user as they do not get the coupons that they'd want to use, it also panders to the businesses, who find that their coupons are not reaching the intended audience. Additionally, there are multiple coupon codes that can be used multiple times by multiple users. We are trying to build a platform to facilitate trading coupons so that you give away the coupon you have and receive one from the brand that you want.

This problem would continue to grow. At some stage, the growth hack associated with sending out coupons to entice a paying user into your fold would drop off due to this massive amount of value going to waste because of wasted targeting efforts and a lack of organized platform to make trades. In the future, this platform has the potential to grow into a formal marketplace for coupons, a peer-to-peer Groupon would be a good analogy, and create a new channel for companies to pump their marketing budgets into. Furthermore, you as a user would be able to make use of this platform and get the coupons you want, and not just the ones that the world has dealt out to you.

Challenges we ran into

One of the major problems that we sought to resolve with community guidelines was to verify whether people were adding legitimate coupons. A new update that would be live before Subswap becomes available generally would be options to flag bad coupons and consequently, the person who has posted it.

The second hurdle was to figure out the design for the platform. After much deliberation, we tried to balance brutalism, fun, and sober all at the same time, resulting in what you see in front of you. A future update might just take away the brutalism.