From an entry to win some prize money in a company business idea competition to engineering a state-of-the-art touchscreen computer in Taiwan. From figuring out how to sell additional toppings on a Domino’s pizza to using piezo-resistive materials to understand how a person stands.
Since Sept 27, 2012 (when addSale was officially registered in Mumbai), we have gone through two industries, two serious potential buyers, three ground-up built teams, three names, five offices, 10 internal and external products, trying to sell in 15 countries, 22 names on the cap table, deployments across 25 cities in 100+ stores and 120+ team members.
Along all of this, we have always remained true to our passion to build products that help people shop.
Our vision was to be at the intersection of technology and retail. We wanted to straddle the gap between the ease, convenience and personalisation of digital technology with the instant gratification, touch and feel experience of physical retail.
Over the last few years, as we worked with new brands, we continuously optimised and iterated the product, till it became a solution. And that’s where things started getting difficult. Our inability to tightly control every moving piece on which our success depended on, gave us countless sleepless nights for the slow pace of our growth.
While we were well aware of the shortcomings of our model, our passion and optimism (and, not the least, the brilliant margins) pulled us through these tough times. With lots of learnings, relationships and renewed enthusiasm, we move onto Fynd, a nearby fashion shopping app.
Fynd has been on our product roadmap since early 2013, but inertia kept us from diving completely into it. With the country reaching a point of inflection, in terms of online commerce and mobile phone penetration, we feel it was the right time.
With Fynd, we aim to bridge the gap between online and offline commerce - allowing consumers to digitally browse, discover and shop from stores around them. Providing fast delivery, ability to ‘Fynd a Fit’ and discover fresh inventory, Fynd is a smart new way of shopping.
While we continue to support our Shopsense clients, we are shifting our focus towards building Fynd into a useful and popular shopping app. Fynd will be launched next week on the iOS and Android Play Store, with operations starting in Mumbai.
With this shift in business, we are also thrilled to welcome new investors who share our vision Sasha, Vidushi and the team at Kae Capital, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Vikram Limaye (MD & CEO of IDFC) and Abhinav Daga.
Happy Fynding!
Website:
www.gofynd.com and app on the Play Store
Here’s a sneak peek at what we have built:
Fynd - Nearby Fashion Shopping from Fynd on Vimeo.
About the author:
Harsh Shah is one of the founders of Fynd (previously Shopsense). Prior to starting up, he was a consultant with Opera Solutions where he worked on strategy and analytics projects for financial services, retail and manufacturing companies. An alumnus of IIT Bombay, Harsh was the head of the institute’s entrepreneurship cell and had previously co-founded Nova Global.
