Two friends Prashanth M N & Prashanth V have worked together to develop a simple, pictorial & interactive Hindu Calendar app for daily Panchang, festivals, auspicious days & Indian government holidays. The App is 100% free, with no ads, completely offline with no tracking of any user data.
Hindu Calendar App – Overview
HinduPost introduced users to the App when it was launched last year. Its best feature is that it is totally offline and occupies very little space on your phone. It is available in English and Hindi and carries important details such as Rahu Kaal, Gulika Kaal, and Yamaghanta. It also features the Panchang of the Day along with the time of sunrise and sunset. The month and day view also carries information regarding holidays, festivals, and details of auspicious timings among other things.
This video explains some of the salient features of the calendar.
Why is it free and What’s the catch?
There is no catch it’s totally free, with no ads, no in-app purchases, and no user data tracking. It started with the vision that a Hindu should have access to daily Panchang & Calendar without any unnecessary ads. As Kids, we were curious about the paper Calendar that hung on walls. Especially the upcoming festivals of the month with bright red colours brought in a lot of joy & excitement. In pursuit of that nostalgic feeling – if we try to search for a simple Hindu Calendar app on Playstore, all the available apps were of very low quality & filled with tons of ads. So, we wanted to contribute to the Hindu community by building a calendar platform that is clean & Ad-free.
Journey of its creators
The journey to translate the vision into reality wasn’t an easy one. While Prashanth V designed the App UI and gathered the data and images, he faced hurdles in getting an App development company on board for execution. The companies he approached were charging exorbitant prices ranging from ₹ 80K to ₹ 1.50 Lakhs. That is when he decided to get help from his college friend Prashanth M N who is working in the IT sector.
“Prashanth M N helped me to transform my imagination into reality using his coding skills. We worked together on weekends, holidays and whenever we had time to execute this idea” Prashanth V said. The first version of the App was published on Jan-2021 and they have continued the campaign every year. App has received a lot of appreciation from the Reddit community & also excellent reviews on Playstore as well.
Is it available for IOS? Right now it’s only available for Android. “We can’t afford the yearly apple developer fees, maintenance costs & compliances. Based on user feedback, this time we have added a contribution button, which is totally optional. If we get any donations, yes we will bring it to iOS and also use it for future development & expansion into other regional languages”, says Prashanth.
The efforts put in by these youngsters need to be appreciated by supporting their initiative.
Download the App here: Playstore Download link
