It’s late evening in a hostel room in Jaipur. Three laptops glow in the dim light, screens filled with lines of code, UI mockups, and endless tabs. Between college assignments, back-to-back classes, and hurried meals, three young students sit hunched over their screens — debating features, fixing bugs, and building something they believe in.

What started as conversations between friends is now taking shape as ‘Swappr’ — an app designed to make buying, selling, and swapping items on campus simpler, smarter, and more engaging.

“At its core, we just love building this,” Garvit Dudeja, founder of Swappr, tells The Better India. “We don’t think about what will happen after a week or 10 days. If you love building something, everything else just flows.”

From college idea to campus solution

Garvit, a second-year engineering student at Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT) Jaipur, didn’t begin his journey with Swappr alone. Along with Priyansh Joshi, his college mate, and Lakshya Mangla, a school friend now studying at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), the trio slowly pieced together an idea rooted in a very familiar student problem.

It began during their early college days, when Garvit and Priyansh were experimenting with a merchandise venture. “We used to take orders from cafes and restaurants. Things were going well initially, but later we faced issues, and we even got scammed,” recalls Priyansh. 

“So we decided to shut it down and start something new.”

That “something new” came from observing their own lives.

Students often buy things impulsively: a keyboard, headphones, sneakers, or something else they feel they need at the time, only to realise months later that they barely use them. The usual solution? Selling them on chaotic WhatsApp groups where listings get buried, prices drop unfairly, or deals fall through. 

“We saw this happening everywhere,” explains Lakshya. “People were unable to sell items at the right value, or they rushed into selling to friends at lower prices. We thought, why not create a platform that solves this?”

That thought became Swappr, a swipe-based app where students can list things they no longer use, find products nearby, and connect with others on campus.

It didn’t feel like a big leap, because students were already doing something similar every day. Students were used to scrolling, swiping, saving products, and comparing choices online. Garvit and his friends wanted to bring that same ease into something far more practical: helping students get value from things lying unused in their hostel rooms.

“We wanted to make it engaging, as two of the most addictive things today are shopping and swiping. So we thought, why not combine both?” adds Garvit.

So, on Swappr, students swipe through listings, match when both sides are interested, and then start a conversation. It feels simple, almost like browsing through things a........

© The Better India