New stores where people reach for reading glasses

The challenge

Reading glasses sell to people over forty, but her shortlist comes from brokers and gut feeling. Two stores opened last year in suburbs full of students and young families. One has already closed, and the other barely pays its rent.

How the flow works

With xMap Flows, Priya built Keystone. Keystone is an AI employee: a flow of 7 blocks.

1. Every quarter,

   Every quarter (Schedule)

2. across twelve Mumbai suburbs,

   Twelve suburbs (Area of interest)

3. Keystone counts the people over forty who live there,

   People over forty (Demographics)

4. finds the opticians already open,

   Opticians already there (Nearby places)

5. works out the over-forties for each optician,

   Over-forties per optician (Calculated field)

6. keeps the six best,

   The six best (Sort and limit)

7. and makes the report for the board.

   Report for the board (Make a report)

What it solves

• A shortlist from brokers: solved by Demographics and Nearby places
• Stores near students: solved by Calculated field and Sort and limit
• One store closed: solved by Sort and limit and Make a report

The result

This quarter, Keystone puts Thane and Chembur on top: about nine thousand people over forty for every optician, three times the city average. Priya walks into the board meeting with one report and leaves with six approvals.

Priya stopped guessing where customers live. Now she opens where they squint.

An illustrative scenario: the figures are modelled to show what the flow produces, not a customer's results.

The flow, block by block

1. 1

   Every quarter

   Schedule

   Starts the flow on a timetable.

2. 2

   Twelve suburbs

   Area of interest

   Sets where the flow looks: countries, cities or specific places, or areas you draw on a map.

3. 3

   People over forty

   Demographics

   Who lives in an area: the number of residents, men and women, and nine age groups, from xMap’s population grid (hexagons of about 0.1 km², about 100 countries).

4. 4

   Opticians already there

   Nearby places

   Places around a point from xMap’s own places database (300M+ places, refreshed every month): pick the types of place (more than 5,000, such as Restaurant, Cafe, Pharmacy, Hospital or Gas station, or a whole group of them) and how far to look.

5. 5

   Over-forties per optician

   Calculated field

   Adds fields worked out from the others: a number, a text or a yes/no.

6. 6

   The six best

   Sort and limit

   Puts the items in order, and can keep only the first ones: the 10 best rated, the 20 nearest, the highest fit scores.

7. 7

   Report for the board

   Make a report

   Turns the items that reach it into a clean PDF report with your logo and colour: the summary an xMap LLM block wrote for the whole list, the figures, charts of kinds and cities, a map and the list.

Templates to build it

Ready-made flows with the same blocks. Open one, change the city and the kind of place, and run it.

• Districts with no pharmacy close byBlocks with many people and few pharmacies, ranked.
• Where young adults lack mental health careBlocks with many young adults and few mental health services.
• Neighbourhoods with many people and few notariesWhere many people live far from a notary, block by block.
• Areas with few halal restaurantsBlocks with many people and few halal restaurants.
• Where to build senior livingBlocks with many seniors and few care homes.
• Where young professionals rent: co-living sitesBlocks with many young professionals and city life, for co-living.

Industries

Learn how it works

• Location intelligenceUsing where things are, and what is around them, to make business decisions.
• Catchment areaThe area a store or service draws its customers from.
• Drive time vs radiusTwo ways to draw the area around a site, and when each is good enough.
• Ask the map a questionHow many of a kind of place, how many people for each, and where the gaps are, answered on the spot.
• Count what is around each of your placesCompetitors, footfall magnets or services within a distance of each site.
• Compare sites side by sideTwo or three spots measured the same way, one column each, the best of every row marked and the best site and why.

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