An unexpected lay-off and subsequent drinks out with friends started a Collingwood resident down a path toward tech entrepreneurship.
Prabha Mattappally created a very specific mobile phone app for a very specific problem: reading a menu in a dimly lit restaurant and/or reading any small print when you forget your readers.
Mattappally found herself without a job after being laid off in September.
“I was out for some drinks with some girlfriends, just trying to lick my wounds, and they were trying to help me kind of figure out what I should do next,” said Mattappally.
When it came time to order, the table of women needed their phone flashlights to see the menu, and some of them sheepishly admitted to borrowing reading glasses to see what the restaurant had to offer.
“I thought to myself, ‘There’s got to be a better way,’” said Mattappally.
She set to work researching phone apps, only to find out there wasn’t one specifically geared to reading in dark places, and magnifying text.
“There just wasn’t a simple solution,” she said.
Relying on tech support and designers from India, Vietnam and Pakistan, Mattappally got to work creating a simple solution, not only to her menu reading struggles, but to fill in the time she had between jobs.
“I found some really great people, and one foot in front of the other and the menu reader came to be,” she said.
A little over two months later, Mattappally launched her app, Menu Reader, on Apple’s App Store. It will launch on the Android app store in January.
The app uses your camera to view the text you’re trying to read, and within the app, the user can adjust the brightness of the screen to see better, use the phone flashlight on a dimmer to offer more light, and also can magnify the text.
“It was a bit surreal,” Mattappally said of seeing her idea launch in the App Store.
She has been using the app at the grocery store to read ingredient lists. She also says it’s allowed her to leave her reading glasses at home. A friend’s husband used it to read instructions for assembling his child’s toy at Christmas.
The app sells for a one-time fee of $2.99, so it won’t be much of a moneymaker for Mattappally, but it fed her creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.
“Last time I was in between roles, I spent the time taking courses … I have to say that, in my opinion, the return on investment from building this app is tenfold what my return on investment was from taking courses the last time,” she said, noting the benefits have been for her confidence and mindset.
“I don’t know what’s next … but what I do know is I want to continue challenging myself. I want to continue flexing that creative and entrepreneurial muscle … Going into my next role, I want something that keeps me challenged and makes me happy.”
To find Mattappally’s app, search Menu Reader in your app store.
