Suresh's Verified Trades

A small website where anyone nearby can find an electrician, plumber, carpenter or mechanic that one trusted accountant has personally vouched for.

Who this is for

Suresh Kulkarni runs a chartered accountant's practice in Satara with two articled assistants, above a medical shop on Rajwada Road. It is 2:40 in the afternoon, the power has gone again, and the office phone rings. A stranger who got Suresh's name from a neighbour needs a plumber before evening because a pipe has burst under the kitchen sink.

How the job is done today

Suresh keeps about forty names at the back of an old diary: the electrician who rewired the office, the carpenter who made the file racks, a mechanic who has kept the same scooter running for nine years. A copy lives in an Excel sheet on the office desktop. When someone asks, Meena at the front desk reads numbers out over the phone. When the power is off, the desktop is off too, so she hunts through the diary while the caller waits. Half the requests come from people Suresh has never met.

The screens, in order

1. Find someone — Lets a stranger pick a trade and their locality in two taps, on a page small enough to open on weak mobile data.
2. People for this job — Shows the short list of workers Suresh vouches for in that trade and area, with a call button beside each name.
3. Worker page — Tells the caller why Suresh trusts this person, what they have been seen doing, which areas they cover and which languages they speak, then lets them call or WhatsApp straight away.
4. Suresh's list — Lets Suresh add a worker, change a number or mark someone as away, from a phone, in the morning before the power goes.

What it keeps track of

• Workers — name, trade, which localities they cover, phone number, whether they use WhatsApp, languages spoken, what Suresh has seen them do, how long Suresh has known them, available or away
• Trades and localities — the list of trades shown on the first page, and the list of Satara areas people can choose from

The one decision that matters

Whether a stranger sees the worker's phone number directly or fills in a request form that Suresh's office passes on. A form feels safer and keeps Suresh in the middle, but it only works if someone at the office is there to answer it, and in the afternoon the office is dark and the person with the burst pipe cannot wait. Show the number, with each worker's permission, and put a tap-to-call button under it. The whole point is that Suresh's word travels without Suresh having to be at his desk. Ask every worker once, in person, before listing them.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out star ratings and reviews from the public. The value here is that one known person has vouched for each name, and strangers' stars would water that down and invite fake praise. Leave out prices, bookings and customer accounts too. Nobody needs to log in to find a plumber, and every extra step is another thing that fails when the phone is on low battery and the house has no power.

How you would know it worked

The plumber on the list tells Suresh that a family from Shahupuri, whom neither of them knows, called during an afternoon power cut and said they found the number on Suresh's page.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I am a chartered accountant in Satara and people keep asking me to recommend an electrician, plumber, carpenter or mechanic. I want a simple website where anyone can pick a trade and their area and see only the workers I personally know and trust. Each worker should have a short page with their name, the areas they cover, the languages they speak, a line from me about why I trust them, and big buttons to call or WhatsApp them. Visitors should not need to log in. Only I should be able to add or change workers, from my phone, and mark someone as away when they are out of town. The power goes out most afternoons here, so people will often open this on their mobile with weak data and low battery. Please keep the pages very light, with no big photos, so they open quickly and the call button works with one tap.