A newer version of the Gradio SDK is available: 6.20.0
title: Dukaan Saathi – AI WhatsApp Reply Assistant
emoji: 🚀
colorFrom: yellow
colorTo: yellow
sdk: gradio
sdk_version: 6.18.0
python_version: '3.13'
app_file: app.py
pinned: false
🏪 Dukaan Saathi — AI WhatsApp Reply Assistant for Indian Shop Owners
Built for the Gradio × Hugging Face Build-Small Hackathon 2026 · Track: Backyard AI
The Problem
My neighbor runs a medical store in Ahmedabad. Every day, 40–60 customers message him on WhatsApp asking about medicine availability, prices, and home delivery. He's one person behind a counter — he can't reply to everyone fast enough, and he loses orders because of it.
Big AI tools like ChatGPT aren't an option for him: he doesn't want customer prescription details going to some American server. And he doesn't have time to learn a new app.
Dukaan Saathi solves this with a small, privacy-respecting model that runs entirely on Hugging Face infrastructure — no data sent to big cloud APIs, no subscriptions, no complexity.
What It Does
- Shop owner sets up their profile once (shop name, type, items they sell)
- Paste any customer WhatsApp message
- Choose language: Hindi, Gujarati, English, or Hinglish
- Get a perfectly worded, human-sounding reply in 3 seconds
- Copy → paste → send
Why Small Models Are the Right Choice Here
This isn't a compromise — small models are actually better for this use case:
- Privacy: Customer messages (some containing prescription details or personal info) never leave a controlled environment
- Speed: 7B models respond in seconds, not minutes
- Cost: Shop owners can't pay per-API-call; small models make this sustainable
- Offline potential: The same model can run locally on a mid-range laptop
Model
Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct — 7 billion parameters (well within the 32B cap)
Chosen because:
- Best-in-class multilingual performance for Hindi, Gujarati, and Hinglish
- Instruction-following quality that produces natural, conversational replies
- Lightweight enough to be genuinely "small model" in spirit
How to Run Locally
git clone https://huggingface.co/spaces/YOUR_USERNAME/dukaan-saathi
cd dukaan-saathi
pip install -r requirements.txt
HF_TOKEN=your_token python app.py
Hackathon Info
- Event: Gradio × HF Build-Small Hackathon 2026
- Track: Chapter One — Backyard AI
- Constraint: ≤32B parameters (using 7B)
- Builder: Parth Bhuptani (@ParthBhuptani)