Inspired by the challenges of military postings, the former Sergeant is now working on a digital marketplace for buying, selling, rentals, jobs and everyday connections across India.
VIJAYAWADA, ANDHRA PRADESH: While serving in the Delhi area, Shanmuk Srinivas Muddana wanted to sell his car, preferably to someone in the Air Force or wider Defence community. He shared the details through personal contacts. Some fellow service members enquired a month or two later, only to learn that the car had already been sold.
For Srinivas, who retired as a Sergeant on September 30, 2026, after 20 years in the Indian Air Force, the incident illustrated a familiar problem: people with matching needs may live nearby without knowing about one another. It is the kind of gap Aplify, a digital marketplace developed by Vijayawada-based Dawnlight Business Services Private Limited, seeks to address. Since retiring, he has been working on the venture full-time.
Two communities, one marketplace
Aplify is available to users across India. Individuals can advertise used vehicles, electronics and household items; property owners can list residential or commercial spaces; employers can post vacancies; and local businesses can showcase services. Interested users can explore available listings and contact advertisers.
The platform has two community options: Armed Forces, for serving personnel, veterans and their families, and Others, for the general public. Both can interact across community boundaries, while filters help users discover advertisements from a chosen community. Community selection alone does not verify someone’s service background or identity.
Consider a family preparing to leave a cantonment. Its used car might interest another service family or a civilian buyer living nearby, yet an offer circulated within a small personal network may never reach either. Aplify aims to make such advertisements easier to discover beyond immediate contacts. Whatever the seller’s background, buyers must still check ownership, maintenance records and vehicle condition.
For Srinivas, the value of wider connections is closely tied to the experience of postings and the people who become part of a service family’s life.
“Every posting means leaving some familiar faces behind and finding new people who become family. But settling into a new place comes with its own challenges. If there were an easier way to connect with people within our community, whether to find a home, buy essentials or pass on things we no longer need, every posting could become a little easier.
That is what I want Aplify to become — a platform that keeps Armed Forces families connected, while making buying, selling, renting and carpooling easier for people across India.”
The same issue can arise in other settings. An employer looking for experience in logistics, administration or technical operations may be interested in veterans but have limited links to former service personnel. Aplify’s jobs category allows organisations to advertise vacancies that veterans and civilian applicants can discover.
For rental properties, owners can select “Defence Personnel Welcome” as a tenant preference, making that information visible to people searching for accommodation. Students, working professionals and other civilian tenants can also explore rental listings on the platform.
More information before a transaction
Finding an advertisement is only part of the process. A vehicle may look different on inspection than in photographs; a property description may leave important questions unanswered. Altered images, misleading claims and requests for advance payment can create further uncertainty. Someone falsely claiming a Defence affiliation can also exploit a buyer’s assumptions.
Aplify offers two separate, optional verification processes. User Verification involves applicable identity-document checks on an account. Ad Verification concerns a particular listing: for eligible advertisements, the advertiser remotely presents the item and relevant details for manual review by Aplify’s team. Approved listings receive a Verified Ad badge and can be found through a Verified Ads filter.
Verification of a user does not automatically extend to that person’s advertisements, and a community label is not proof of service affiliation. Neither process guarantees ownership, authenticity, condition or transaction safety. Buyers should inspect items, verify documents and exercise caution before making payments.
Aplify’s published community guidelines prohibit sharing confidential service-related information and instruct users to mask sensitive details in verification documents. They also prohibit impersonation and misuse of community badges.
Local connections, wider access
The current in-app chat allows users to make enquiries without paying Aplify to unlock contact details. Advertisers can also post listings without a standard posting charge during the platform’s introductory period. Other categories include carpooling, online auctions, and business and service listings.
Dawnlight Business Services Private Limited was incorporated in Vijayawada in October 2021 and is recognised under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade’s Startup India initiative. Available on Android, iOS and the web, Aplify has crossed 100,000 downloads on Google Play. The company is developing its presence in markets including Hyderabad and Secunderabad.
Now based in Hyderabad, Srinivas sees his post-retirement work on Aplify as an opportunity to apply lessons from military service to everyday civilian needs. The platform is an independent private-sector initiative, not an official Armed Forces service or one endorsed by the Armed Forces or any government body.
The Delhi car sale remains a personal example of the problem Aplify is trying to address: a family with something to sell, a neighbour looking for it, or an employer and job-seeker with complementary needs may be closer to one another than their existing networks suggest.
About Aplify: Aplify is an Indian digital marketplace developed by Dawnlight Business Services Private Limited, a DPIIT-recognised startup incorporated in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh.
Website: https://www.aplify.in
(Disclaimer: The above content is a press release and PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.).
(PTI News)
