Coolers in the shops four days before the heat

Ananya plans stock for one of India’s biggest air cooler makers, from its warehouse outside Delhi. When a heatwave hits, every dealer wants coolers on the same day. Ananya sends stock by last year’s sales, so shops in crowded colonies run out while quieter towns sit full. Trucks take three days, and a sold-out week is a lost season. With xMap Flows, Ananya built Oracle. Every morning at six, Oracle takes her three hundred dealers, checks the next ten days at each one, keeps the dealers facing a heatwave, counts the people living around each, works out the coolers to send, and adds them to the truck plan. Today, Oracle sees forty-six degrees coming to east Delhi next week. Dealers in Laxmi Nagar, with six hundred thousand people around them, get six trucks now, four days before the heat. Last year, those shops sold out in two days. Ananya used to chase the heat. Now her trucks get there first.

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