Me-Grow empowers businesses with research and technology cost-effectively - Jasal Shah, MD & CEO, Avidestal Technologies
Update: 2023-04-03 12:37 IST
Me-Grow
In an exclusive interview with The Hans India, Mr Jasal Shah, the MD & CEO of Avidestal Technologies, shared the journey and success story of Me-Grow, a SaaS-based product designed to help businesses gather customer feedback and build relevant strategies for growth and expansion. With almost two decades of experience in the market research industry, they noticed many businesses struggling to conduct proper market research due to a lack of resources and understanding. This intelligent model will allow headquarters to receive feedback for any of its branches from anywhere and at any given time, enabling them to monitor the entire consumer experience process centrally. Me-Grow plans for custom growth templates to help businesses further streamline their growth strategies and continue to roll out many more features and upgrades in subsequent phases.
Mr Jasal Shah - MD & CEO of Avidestal Technologies
He says, "Our aim was to bring market research services closer to businesses of all sizes and sectors, not just a select few. Our core idea is to provide consistent, constructive, and customized feedback to all businesses, empowering them to take a step closer to their customers and reach their growth potential. Market research can be an expensive and cumbersome process, and these gaps were hindering businesses from achieving their growth potential. Our goal with Me-Grow is to address these issues by empowering businesses with the power of research and technology in a cost-effective and effortless way. Me-Grow makes the feedback process straightforward for both subscribers and their customers."
Me-Grow services
As I mentioned about the purpose of Me-Grow, it completely revolves around assisting businesses in their growth journey by enhancing customer understanding – in terms of their preferences, habits, needs, and experience et al. Ours is a seamless process where any business can simply signup up for the platform with their email/mobile and fill in their business details to complete the business profile. The subscriber has to choose a payment plan that will generate a unique QR for them. Currently, we have a free plan of 30 days for new users, along with monthly and annual subscription plans.
We have 3 main features – Setup, Strategy & Quick Connect. Once the signup is done, the subscriber can launch a Growth Template (GT) under Setup, which is nothing but a pre-set questionnaire, in simpler terms, on QR or send to consumers through their mobile numbers. We currently cover 20+ industries and have designated GTs for each of them. These GTs help to measure and analyze various parameters like customer behaviour, habits, preferences, needs etc. Through Me-Grow, the subscriber would be able to see the results & responses, under Strategy, in real-time as pie charts & other data visualization methods for their easy understanding & comprehension. They can then leverage these data points to build effective business strategies.
Me-Grow also brings the feature of Quick Connect, through which the subscriber can conduct online FGDs/IDIs with customers. The purpose of this feature is tohelp businesses unearth the deeper emotions & hidden insights from their customers. Through Me-Grow, the subscriber will get to access & experience the power of a seamless feedback process that will give them an advantage over their peers & competition in customer understanding and business decisions. The biggest addition, as I mentioned, would be the introduction of the franchise model for large-sized businesses & the option to create custom Growth Templates. Apart from this, we will also see the integration of an Online Community, AI-based strategy recommendations, forecasts, etc., in the upcoming phases of the product.
Distinctive features of the product
We are proud to say that we do not have any direct competitors in the market. We are the firsts to pioneer and empower businesses with the means to understand their customers & competition better. With USPs such as cost-effectiveness and easy to install & maintain, businesses can save time, effort, and energy while addressing the changing demand of their consumers and managing their day-to-day tasks hassle-free. If you ask about key USPs, then I would maybe list the following:
♦ Industry-specific Growth Templates to capture feedback around various important variables (brand perception, usage & attitude, recall et al.) for enhanced customer understanding in the specific business category. Continue to add more pre-set GTs
♦ Provision to conduct online FGDs/IDIs with customers for raw insights & deep understanding for constructive strategy building
♦ One-of-its-kind Franchise model for all big businesses having multiple branches (to-be-launched by Jan 2023)
♦ Cost-effective & tech-based model for minimum effort & maximum growth and these are just the features we currently have. As I mentioned earlier as well, we have major expansion plans in terms of features, which will include
♦ AI-based suggestions & recommendation
♦ Sales forecasting & projection
♦ Complete integration of the online qualitative suite
♦ Online community-building platform
Me-Grow cutting-edge technology to deliver its clients with end-to-end customer experience & feedback solutions
Let me give a little backstory of our product. Me-Grow is a part of the tech brand Avidestal Technologies, which already has 4 SaaS products under its umbrella. These are all DIY products with its own niche & provide rich consumer insights. Me-Grow is nothing but an ingenious integration of these 4 products along with AI-based solutions.
The data we capture through Me-Grow will help businesses by giving them valuable insights into their customers' behaviours, preferences, and purchasing patterns. They can leverage these data points to curate more effective and personalized marketing strategies, which would help them enhance their customer experience. This way, they can both achieve their business goals as well as get a better understanding of their customers for continued growth and success.
We plan to improve business processes and spur expansion for organizations of all sizes and footprints in various industries. This is our step towards making the business owners self-sufficient and smart to easily navigate through their business journey. Our future goals entail leveraging AI and big data technologies to provide real-time consumer feedback to businesses for efficient strategizing. The AI-based recommendation models of this product would be built on data. Still, it would need manual efforts only in the beginning, and afterwards, businesses can see recommendations by clicking a tab on the product.
Role of Customer experience in the Digital world and its benefits to businesses
Covid changed the way businesses interact with their customers. They switched from offline to online very rapidly. In today's unpredictable business climate, understanding consumer behaviour is crucial for any organization to become a market leader. Customers today are intelligent & demanding. A bad customer experience can ruin years of good service and brand loyalty. With modern customers demanding tailored experiences and more personalized interaction with the businesses they buy from, companies are now investing in various technologies to provide quick service to meet the demand. To boost their customer experience in this digital world, businesses can optimize the brand experience by tweaking their current strategies and improving the integration of their communication channels, making their business more customer-centric, solving their problem far quicker, and helping them find more options. In this era of social distancing, access to technology has also enabled businesses to deliver faster communication to their end customers, providing more direct results & improving their customer experience journey. Customer experience is directly proportional to customer satisfaction. It plays a major role in earning value and loyalty from customers.
The fact that customer satisfaction is the key to business success is known to everyone. Technology is that weapon that has brought customers closer to businesses. Every business aims to earn revenue at the end of the day with a great customer-centric approach. Integration of tech in business has made the whole process much faster & more profitable. The impact such advancement has on overall business growth & revenue is unparalleled. Me-Grow was built keeping in mind these benefits & aims to provide exactly that to the businesses – great revenue and growth.
Future plans – Funding, expansion, any other key developments
Yes, definitely. We have expansion plans for the current quarter and the next quarter. The overwhelming response we got in our pilot and the ongoing phase of the product encouraged us to expand our territory and simultaneously roll out many new features in the product.
In terms of geographical outreach, we have plans to expand to other tier 1 & tier 2 cities in subsequent phases. Currently, we have field forces in the 7 major cities of India – Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad & Lucknow. We have major plans to expand and set up our teams in more than 20 cities in India in another 6-8 months. A corporate sales team will be established to approach the franchise businesses and pitch our product to them with the specially designed franchise model with custom plans.
Regarding product development & upgrade, since the launch of our pilot phase, we have been getting a lot of insights and learning as to how we can better our product. Product development is always an ongoing process. As per the suggestions from the team and insights from the current market of the product, we have planned to bring in many other exciting features that will further aid the businesses in their processes and strategy development. Apart from the Franchise model, we have plans to integrate Whatsapp with Me-Grow for business communication, allowing our subscribers to create custom GTs, AI-based strategy recommendations, forecasting, and a lot of exciting business solutions centred around consumer feedback.