Kerala’s much-touted alcohol sales queue management app, BevQ, finally appeared on Google’s Play Store late Wednesday evening, but the glitches stayed in the state just under two hours before the planned resumption of alcohol sales. Although users who searched BevQ on the Play Store couldn’t track it, they were able to initiate the download by clicking shared links. Only searches with the keyword ksbcvirtualq listed the app, but in third place.

Apps from private companies took the top two places. Alcohol sales started at 9 a.m. in bars, pubs, BEVCO, and consumer spring stores across the state. The BevQ app offers 15-minute slots for buying alcohol at a specific point of sale near you. To buy alcohol, you have to book a place in the virtual queue via the app. The app was developed to ensure that social clearance standards are maintained in these outlets after the outbreak of the corona virus. At a given time, there will be only five people in front of the counter and only 50 people will be served from one counter in one hour, officials told ManoramaNews on Wednesday.

First, 4.8 lakh tokens are issued every day. The state had shutters on the bars on March 23 and closed the BEVCO stores on March 25 after the first phase of the blockade began.

More than one Lakh user downloaded the app from the Play Store within seven hours, although the app is still not immediately understandable with a simple BevQ search. This is the third iteration or version of BevQ since the successful test. Some technical experts say that disruptions such as one-time password failure (OTP) may be due to an overload.

Many users who managed to download the app complained that they were unable to complete the installation process because they did not receive the one-time password. Angry users rated the app with a low rating of 1 after trying to install it. On Thursday at 12 noon, BevQ’s user rating dropped from an initial 4 plus to 2.7.

Google can downgrade apps that receive permanent negative ratings, making it more difficult for new users to discover themselves while searching. The seamless functioning of the app will be critical to the success of resuming alcohol sales by enforcing social distance standards and avoiding crowdsourcing. The app’s much anticipated Play Store foray will also cause alcohol, along with groceries and other important and non-essential items, to become marginalized in an ecommerce retail game in their own country, although home delivery is currently excluded. The test run of the BevQ app was carried out after Google’s nod earlier this week. The app was developed by Faircode Technologies from Kochi. The early access version of the developer app, which is used for testing purposes only, was downloaded within 2 minutes of 20,000 on Wednesday when it was released.