Skip to main content

Google Areo is a new app for ordering food or home services in India

Google is getting into the restaurant delivery and home services businesses – nope, not in the U.S., but rather in parts of India. The company has quietly launched a new app called Areo which currently only works in Bangalore and Mumbai, India, allowing users to order meals from nearby restaurants or schedule appointments with local service professionals, including electricians, painters, cleaners, plumbers, and more.
The app was first spotted by The Android Soul blog, then confirmed with Google by The Economic Times.
Areo popped up on the Google Play Store on April 12, 2017, where the company briefly explains how the product works. The idea is to consolidate both food delivery and home services in a single app, where you can search for dishes or restaurants – even filter by vegetarian options – or book appointment times with local pros. Users can also pay in the app, the description indicates, via card, netbanking, or cash on delivery.
With Areo, Google is basically acting as the middleman – that is, it’s not running its own food delivery or home services business, but is rather working with service providers in the area.
Launch partners include UrbanClap and Zimmber on the home services side, and Freshmenu, Box8 and Faasos for food ordering, The ET reports. For payments, it’s working with TimesofMoney’s DirecPay, but not Android Pay, oddly, they also discovered.
Google said it isn’t yet charging its partners for the service, but rather characterized Areo as an experiment.
This isn’t Google’s first time in the delivery space, however. The company continues to operate its rapid-delivery service Google Express in the U.S., which delivers items from stores like Costco, Walgreens, Toys R Us, Petsmart, Whole Foods and several others. That service has had its ups and downs, however, as Google rethought the model. For example, last fall Google announced it was killing the part of the business that would deliver perishables.
Google also isn’t the only major tech company to try to make ordering home services something that can be done from your phone. Amazon, too, operates a Home Services business where customers can search and book with area pros for things like home theater installation, home improvement, assembly, house cleaning, lawn care, and more.
The Areo app is live on the Google Play Store, but only available in the above cities in India. Google has not announced its plans to bring it to other markets at this time.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Problem: Date Formatting cannot be Changed in Microsoft Excel

In this article, we will learn how to change the date formatting. We will use “Text to Column” wizard to resolve the problem of change the date formatting in Microsoft Excel. Let’s understand the functions: - Text to Column:  “Text to Column” is used for separating the cell content which is depending on the way your data is arranged. You can divide the data on the basis of content in the cell such as space, comma, period, semicolon, etc. Let’s take an example and understand how we can convert the date into Text. We have dates, foramatted as text in column A. Now, we want to convert it into date format.     If we want to convert the formatting into numbers, then we need to follow below given steps:- Select the range A2:A11. Go to Data tab, and click on Text to Columns from the Data tools group.     Covert Text to Columns Wizard – Step1 of 3 dialog box will appear. Select fixed width, and click on Next button.     Skip step-2, and...

The world of work is changing. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robots

The world of work is changing. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robots well disrupt the job market. How's it going to affect your business and your industry? How can you leverage the digital transformation to improve your success? The five most common skills among the occupations with the greatest prospect of growing in the future are: 📍Judgment and decision making: Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate one. 📍Fluency of ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity). 📍Active learning: Learning strategies—selecting and using training/instructional methods and procedures appropriate for the situation when learning or teaching new things. 📍Learning strategies: Understanding the implications of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making. 📍Originality: The ability...