PLANO (WBAP/KLIF)- Two University of Texas students from the Dallas area created a website to help people track store inventory amid the Coronavirus Pandemic. Rithwik Pattikonda and Darshan Bhatta, a sophomore and freshman studying Computer Science at UT Austin launched Instok.org to help users find high demand items in nearby stores. “When we came back from college we saw our parents were having trouble finding certain grocery items in stores and then we realized how wide-spread the problem was,” said Pattikonda. “So we built a tool that added inventory information at a number of stores in a single website,” he said.
On the website, you can search for a specific item and it will list where the product is located, online and in stores.
“The initial version of the product was launched within a week of having the idea but since then, we have been working on building an extension to help people track the items and get a notification when the item comes back in stock,” said Pattikonda.
So far the website has store inventories from Target, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Ebay and Sam’s Club but they are continuing to add more stores.
Pattikonda said within 3 weeks of launching the website, 800,000 people have used it. “A lot of people have reached out to us and told us how this has specifically helped them find a product they were looking for,” said Pattikonda. “It’s been really cool to get this positive feedback,” he said.
Pattikonda said he and Bhatta plan to expand this idea even further and make it into a business, helping people even after the pandemic is over.
