The problem InstaBi$ solves

The Problem ？ & Our Approach 📍

People are often reluctant to buy goods from small-scale sellers to avoid fraud in today's world. This affects the users as well as the sellers in many different ways. Let's say a customer orders something and the seller asks them to pay online, but later
on, the customer does not receive the product. Similarly, a small-scale business, which does not have enough funds to make its own payment portal or website can make itself seem more trustworthy to its customers, by using our application.

Our application empowers small-scale businesses by using the blockchain as well as machine learning techniques and connects them on social media platforms like Instagram. We have used smart contracts to ensure the integrity of the transactions carried out on the out platform.

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Future Scope 🔮

Collaborating up with delivery services and including a medium through which customers could interact with the sellers. We will also introduce features for influencers and allow people to follow their favorite sellers. Adding Augmented and Virtual Reality technologies allow people to try out various products in their homes. People having similar interests could join to form communities or groups.

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Business Model 💸

Partnering up with named brands who could potentially sponsor us due to the nature of our application, having modern features like smart contracts and recommendation systems which only a very few competitors in the market have right now.

Coming up with a referral system that gives the user a discount of 20% for every 5 users invited by them.

Students typically are more sensitive to prices, as they have lower disposable income and so a small increase in price can make a good unaffordable. Therefore, we plan to offer special discounts to the students using our application

Challenges we ran into

Our Approach 🚶‍♂️

The sellers can log in via our portal through their metamask wallet and fill in the necessary details. They can then list their products on our portal, the details of the product are stored on the polygon blockchain and the respective product images are stored using file coin.

Similarly, the buyer can log in through their metamask wallet and see all the listed products. They have an option to search for the required product. To buy the product the buyer has to send the required amount through their metamask wallet. The customers will then be recommended products based on the ratings given by them and the users with similar. Our model uses a dataset of various users and finds out the most suitable recommendations for the user. Our model is deployed as a flask API using app services on Azure.

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Challenges 🤡

1. As it was our first time making a project using Filecoin. We had to learn how to store images using IP Addressest.
2. We didn't find a proper dataset so we had to preprocess it before using it.
3. Setting up MetaMask was an issue because we were using it for the first time
4. We didn't know how to use After Effects, so making the promo video was an issue for us.
5. There was no designer on our team so making the design and logo for the website was a big issue for us.