Shop, spend the right way with Froogal

Frugal (Froogal), means think and spend. The same implies for businesses and consumers. Enterprises have to make the right marketing choice, to get sales worth the money spent.

And, consumers or shoppers need to be rewarded for them to feel gratified with the amount spent. "Before taking any action, take the right action," says M Jeevan Chowdary, the founder & CEO of Froogal.

The Hyderabad-based loyalty programme marketing startup, Froogal is a SaaS platform from Froogal Innovations Private Limited.

Jeevan Chowdary, is a 2017 graduate of IIIT-H and his friend from here, Harshit Harchani is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer.

The data driven platform is powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for customising reward programmes for customers.

Froogal has three key offerings -- Froogal Ascend, Froogal Seamless, and Froogal Consumer App.

Froogal Ascend includes customer loyalty and management, customer experience management, customer analytics with predictive and data-driven insights, engagement marketing with advanced automation techniques through SMS, email, push notification, social media, and offers an engine with mobile marketing and referral marketing.

Froogal Seamless helps businesses adapt to omnichannel marketing strategy so as to enhance their sales channels across web and mobile.

Whereas, the Froogal Consumer App, is a mobile application for consumers, which digitises all loyalty programmes offered across various stores.

"Many businesses and customers are disconnected. At present, businesses do not undertake any marketing drive based on data. Froogal helps these businesses to take the right marketing decision by understanding a customer's data.

Our offering is customised depending upon the customer's shopping pattern. Also, we provide strategy consultation for enterprises lacking in IT or marketing infrastructure.

And, Froogal supports a business to go the digital-way by transforming their physical loyalty programmes," M Jeevan Chowdary told The Hans India.

The founder believes, mere cash-based reward programmes might not be successful every time in achieving a set goal. Hence, aspirational value-based loyalty programmes retains a client and creates cross-selling of products at a store, he explains.

"Froogal works with small, medium and large enterprises. Our software is integrated into a store's existing billing software.

From here, we get the customer's transaction data, based on which an appropriate reward is sent out to the customer. We also analyse a customer's buying behaviour by going through their feedbacks.

The platform, powered with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning helps businesses to upscale cross selling on basis of these past data records of the customer. Retaining a customer is more important than attracting new," Chowdary adds.

So, how did the idea emerge? In the second year of college, Chowdary had founded Froogal, not the loyalty platform but a digital wallet solution for offline businesses.

He explains, "the initial idea was to make transactions at campuses and institutions cashless. Later, the service was extended to stores.

Pre-demonetisation period, we had 1,000 per cent traction and even post-demonetisation up to three months, the wallet solution witnessed considerate amount of transactions.

However, with the onslaught of deep pocketed competitors like Paytm, we had to withdraw from the market."

He further adds, "While ideating about a new startup model, our intention was that if we have competition tomorrow it shouldn't affect our startup like it did previously.

Business owners shared multiple pain points, one among them being constraint of IT infra and marketing. Everyone wants to increase revenue, in absence of revenues.

Making best use of technology to solve a problem and bring aspirations of enterprises into reality -- growing revenues in a cost effective way, is what Froogal does."

The platform was developed in April 2017 and their first client was onboarded in June 2017. Till date, they have 30-40 clients having footprint in 20 cities.

The self-funded startup has sustained through the revenues earned. The initial revenue model was based on revenue sharing with businesses, later it was pivoted to monthly subscriptions with three packages available, which starts from Rs 5,000 per location.

The founders recently raised $1 million (nearly Rs 7.1 crore) in pre-Series A funding, from the US-based angel investors. The investment will be utilised for domestic expansion.

They will be setting up sales and operations team in five cities -- Bengaluru, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Chennai and Kolkata, handling tier II cities. From the present 50 employees, they will add 100 people into the technical team, sales and operation, combined.

Froogal has entered into a pact with channel partners in the US, Canada and Gulf Cooperation Council countries, for expanding footprint globally. In coming years, the founders have a target to on board 8,000-10,000 stores.

Without disclosing financials, Chowdary said Froogal has been growing by 200 per cent, in terms of turnover, employees and clients. Going forward, with the expansion in place, we are looking at 300 per cent growth, he added.

Loyalty programme as an industry itself was very nascent and beneficial few years ago. Businesses didn't face stiff competition, back then, compared to these days.

Enterprises felt best to invest on incentives for old customers than spending on attracting new. But, now, customers do not prefer to be loyal towards any brand.

"According to an industry insight, 90 per cent of loyalty programmes are a failure today. Businesses today have only five – 10 per cent of repeat customers.

There is lack in awareness about the importance of offering personalised benefits to customers and creating emotional push for making a purchase.

Froogal is working towards redefining a loyalty programme strategy. It's a win-win situation for both the consumers and businesses, which they need to understand, yet," Chowdary concludes.