Arun Purohit, Simplibuy, a hyper local price information system

Simplibuy is a technology company involved in creation of a hyperlocal price information system. In a conversation with YourStory.in, Arun Purohit, founder of Simplibuy Technologies tells us more about his company.

What is Simplibuy?

Simplibuy is a technology company that believes in creating novel and innovative products for the world audience. We have created a hyper local price information system application “Where is Cheapest”(wic.co.in). The product does to price discovery what Twitter and Digg have done to content search. The results are reported and validated by users. People see the results in a visual way on the map. They win whenever they share a good price discovery.

What is your market differentiator?

Human assisted shopping, Maps based sorted local results, Aggregation of online and offline deals in one place, and rewards for submitting valuable price information are our key differentiators.

How did the idea for your startup come about? How much capital was required to implement the idea?

Enroute, IIM Ahmedabad for participating in Business plan contest finals where we were presenting business case for Web 2.0 based pricing of products suddenly 3 magic words struck us “Where Is Cheapest”. We knew, these were magic words which every body in the world asked and no one had perfect answer but every body had some answer. In interest of every buyer in this world this product needs to be built.

Tell us about your background.

I am a Mechanical Engineer( from NIT Jaipur) and MS(Software Systems from BITS Pilani). I have over 12 years of experience in various technological and management areas. A certified project manager from PMI (USA), before founding Simplibuy Technologies I worked at Geometric Ltd managing offshore Development team of Siemens for 3 years. Earlier, I led a product development team at start up Kritikal Securescan and was instrumental in commercializing visual scan technology in 9 months. Also worked with Laing O’Rourke (UK’s second largest Infra structure company for developing 3D solutions to construction industry. For 6 years I was with Indian Air force as Flight Lieutenant for managing Surface to Air Missile systems. I am the originator of this innovation and besides google map customization and design, I manage the project and stakeholders of the company, steer Innovation Projects, and Operations.

Let us know about the tie-ups that you have.

We have been in dialog with mouthshut.com, which is Asia’s largest consumer review portal to work together to help people buy the products more conveniently.

Where do you see Simplibuy five years from now?

Five years from now we see our application as the price comparison framework that people would refer before making any purchase decision.

Have you been funded?

So far we have been funded by F&F and one of the investment firm from Eastern India. The professionals who have seen our business plan strongly believe in the novelty and profitability of the idea and capability of the team.

How big is your team? Tell us a little bit about your team?

Simplibuy has 6 full time paid members. We are hiring two engineers this quarter. The team has a good mix of certified project manager, web technology expert, software architect and an MBA.

Let us know about your expansion plans.

Currently, we focus on Indian cities that includes, New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune. As an inward expansion we want to proliferate to tier 2 & 3 cities, district headquarters and other urban areas soon. Our outward expansion will be into US and UK, but with different business models customised and targeted to their needs.

Anything else that you want to share with us?

We are seeing 200% growth in user base registrations month on month. The daily visit figures to the site has shown very good upward trend last one month. The portal is being accessed pan India in 34 cities and we are getting requests from users to add their cities to the portal so that they can also start contributing the information to the portal. The leading cities so far are Pune and Bangalore with Mumbai and Chennai catching up fast. Overall we see a lot of positive momentum and greater acceptance by the users.

Do check out http://simplibuy.in/ for more details.