Dashain on Laayo, kites, dakshina and feast mode

There is a week in autumn when the whole of Birtamod and Damak changes. Schools close. Families come home from Kathmandu, from abroad, from wherever work has taken them. The sky fills with kites. Kitchens work harder than at any other time of year, and the smell of mutton curry drifts out of every second house.

Dashain is the biggest festival of the year here, and this year we wanted Laayo to feel like part of it rather than just a way to order dinner. This post is about what we built for Dashain 2083, and a few things we learned along the way.

Feast mode is ON#

The first thing most people saw was the home screen banner: a bright yellow card with the words Feast mode is ON, and two real dishes cut out against the colour.

Getting there took a few attempts. Our first ideas were cartoon mascots and a dark, moody food photo. Neither felt right. What worked was simple: one bright colour, one big headline and real food.

The two dishes were deliberate. One is a bowl of mutton, because for many families Dashain is unthinkable without it. The other is paneer. Plenty of our customers are vegetarian, and a festival banner that only shows meat quietly tells them the celebration is not for them. So every Dashain visual we made shows a veg dish too, with the green and red marks that people already recognise from menus.

Kites on the home screen#

Flying kites, changa, is one of the great joys of Dashain. Rooftops are full of children and adults shouting changa chet as one kite cuts another loose.

So we put kites in the app. On the food home screen, a small lattai, the wooden kite spool, sits in the corner. Tap it, and a kite flies up across the page. Kites also drift through the header at the top of the home screen. They were designed to be light and quick, and they step aside for things that matter: the kite spool moves up out of the way when you have an order on its way, and holding your finger on it hides it for the rest of your visit.

And when it rains, the kites stay grounded. Nobody flies a kite in a downpour.

Dashain dakshina#

During Dashain, elders give dakshina along with tika: a small gift of money, often in an envelope, with their blessing. We borrowed the idea.

During the festival, a food order above रु 300 could earn a Laayo dakshina envelope, one per person per day. The envelope appears on your order screen a moment after you place the order. Open it, and you see what is inside: a coupon for a future order, free delivery, days of Laayo Plus, or money straight into your Laayo Wallet, with prizes up to रु 501.

The prize is locked until your food arrives. As soon as the order is marked delivered, the envelope unlocks, and the next time you open the app a sheet shows you what you won and how to use it. If an order is cancelled, its envelope quietly disappears, so dakshina always rewards a real meal shared, not just a tap.

A bonus for your wallet#

Many families top up their Laayo Wallet before the festival so that ordering for a full house is one tap. During Dashain, every wallet top-up of रु 1,000 or more came with an extra रु 100 from Laayo, our small dakshina to everyone feeding a crowd.

One switch for the whole festival#

Festivals come and go, and the worst thing a festival theme can do is overstay its welcome. Nobody wants to see Dashain kites in the middle of Tihar.

So everything festive in the app is controlled from one place, a festival switchboard our team can change from the admin panel. It decides which theme is on, which effects are switched on, for example the kites, the header and the special touches on the order screen, which banners belong to the festival and whether dakshina is running. It even sets the festival accent colour, a warm marigold for Dashain, which the app blends in gently.

When the festival is over, a single button turns everything off at once. The app goes back to its usual yellow, the kites land, and the banners step aside.

What we learned#

Building for a festival is different from building a feature. It has a hard deadline, everyone in the company has an opinion, and it only matters for a couple of weeks. A few things stayed with us:

• Real food beats illustration. Customers respond to dishes they could actually order.
• Include everyone. A veg dish next to the mutton is a small thing that says a lot.
• Reward the meal, not the tap. Tying dakshina to delivered orders kept it fair.
• Make it easy to switch off. A festival that ends cleanly is part of doing it well.

From all of us at Laayo, Shubha Dashain. We hope your plates were full, your kites flew high, and your rider got there before the curry went cold.