We are a team of 3 UC Berkeley students and one Indian app developer working on an app called Thumo. It is a food delivery service for African markets. We are currently in eSwatini, Southern Africa, where we are hoping to do our pilot launch, since we have no competition, and there seems to be a large market. Lots of restaurants want to use our app (we have closed deals with around 10, and are working with some major brands), and lots of customers seem excited to try it. Our apps work: you can watch the demo we provided to Play Store testers here. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DBk1qOLyRnY

This market will resolve based on the date on which all three of our apps are published in production mode on the Play Store. Only one option can resolve YES. Market resolves OTHER if we release the apps between August 21 and NEVER. The apps we release must be for a similar version of the Thumo delivery service for any option other than NEVER to resolve YES.

Background:

We started by paying an Indian app development company to customize their template delivery app to our specifications, and have picked up the codebase from there. All three of us have moderate experience in software development, but have not directly worked on Android apps.

Currently, our absolute #1 goal is to get our app on the play store, since it is the only way we can reach our users. Our thought was that surely it could not be that difficult to get approved for the Play Store, and we figured that since our app was finished in time for us flying out to eSwatini (5 days ago), we would probably be able to launch it 2-3 days later, giving us time to settle in, since there are lots of shitty apps on the Play Store, and surely Google doesn't want to reject apps that have serious practical functionalities and have clearly taken tremendous effort to develop, right? THIS WAS A HUGE MISTAKE! We are currently realizing that the Play Store is an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE, especially for a multi-app system.

We had to spend two days or so filling out useless forms, deprecating various permissions that seem scary, removing features that might cause increased scrutiny by the play store, and writing useless policies that nobody will ever read or exercise. But we figured that this was just a minor annoyance, and would be helpful in the long run. Now, we're realizing that we're in an insane Catch 22 situation: It is impossible to test our app properly without installing all three of the user, driver, and store apps, but there is no obvious way to provide access to all three apps to Play Store testers, who may or may not be humans. The way we tried, using internal testing links, won't work.

Our user app has been submitted for 2 days, our store app was submitted today (June 23), and our driver app will be submitted tomorrow, pending us figuring out an approach to this stupid problem. Google Play says app reviews usually take 2-7 days. Most people say it usually takes about 3 days your first time submitting an app, and a little less time if you resubmit the app after being rejected, though you might have to submit it multiple times depending on if the rejection feedback is specific enough to fix the problems the Play Store is complaining about, or if they even list all the problems they find. In our case, since in the current submission state you can't actually complete an order, it is possible that our initial feedback could be quite unhelpful, and we could face multiple consecutive rejections. We could also get suspended from the Play Store if Google deemed we were somehow violating their policies, and we would have basically no recourse. We haven't heard back anything from the Play Store yet: I'll update in the comments when we do. I won't trade in this market.

We have total funds of roughly $50,000USD and are burning $4000 a month on all expenses, while facing extremely awkward conversations with Swazi businesses who think we are competent software developers (we think we sort of are!) whilst we have to make excuses and give estimated timelines for the Play Store. Thus, this market serves two purposes.

1. It might be able to help us calibrate how long to expect to wait for Play Store Approval, so we can manage expectations with our partners.
2. It might help us to get helpful advice for the Play Store. To that end, we will award $100 to anyone who can give us advice that significantly contributes to us being accepted on the play store! This will be awarded to any commenter who provides us with a significant piece of advice that we then implement and helps our app to be accepted to the Play Store. It doesn't have to be the only reason our app is accepted, but it should be something we haven't already done, and it should significantly increase our chances of being accepted*

Here is our website, for reference: http://thumo.app/

Here are further details on the problem we're facing with the Play Store (we made this post): https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/thread/352638320?hl=en&sjid=2643018304247211945-EU


*

For example, if you could provide us with a way out of the testing Catch-22 described in the support thread, this would definitely qualify. You will be paid when our apps are accepted to the Play Store. I will nominate @draaglom or the consensus of commenters to be the judge of what constitutes "significant advice" in the event that our apps are accepted, someone has provided us advice that we implemented, but I don't think anyone deserves the reward. However, I think this is unlikely: if you gave us helpful advice and we are accepted, you will probably get the money. You can give as many suggestions as you want, and any of them that we use can count for the prize. In the event that we implement multiple commenters' suggestions, I will divide the money between the two most helpful commenters. We can pay you via any reasonably common payment method, e.g PayPal, bank transfer, crypto.

Feel free to ask any other clarifying questions!