Freebies for consumers, intelligent data for FMCG giants- Startup GoTry

If you visit the GIP mall at Noida, the MGF metropolitan mall at Gurgaon, the Oberoi mall in Goregaon, or the Inorbit mall in Vashi, and are offered some freebies, don’t be surprised. Yes, sachets of products from companies and brands like Pond’s, HUL, Dabur, Knorr, Lifebuoy, Veet, L’Oreal etc., are offered for free at these locations via kiosks set up by startup GoTry.

Go Try deals with multi brand sampling to the correct target group. With Go Try multiple products that are not competing with each other can come together and on its platform offer a one stop sampling shop, where consumers come and get these samples for free.

The story

Dhruv Kalra spent eight long years in experiential marketing in the capacity of Director-Marketing at Vibgyor Brand Services, an agency the deals with the BTL & Event industry. He worked towards conceptualizing and executing on-ground campaigns, mall activations, college and school contact programs to promote a brand to the correct TG, and other related marketing activities, and then branched out to start GoTry afresh under the aegis of the Directors of Vibgyor.

He shares his experience by sharing, “Over the years we realized that a lot of brands that we are working for have requirement of large scale sampling of their new products / variants they launch. The sampling methods that were using were very ad hoc and led to huge wastage and inefficiencies. Any on ground sampling plans customized for the clients worked out to be very expensive and many a times did not prove financially viable. Hence we started working on the project and eventually launched Go Try Marketing in Sep 2012.”

The team

Currently, the team at Vibgyor manages the activities of GoTry, and they’re headquartered at New Delhi, and have branches in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad & Kolkata. Kartik Mehrotra is the Marketing Head and Jose Abraham manages the Technology and Logistics.

The revenue model is to charge the companies from sampling their product to the correct TG. Multiple non competing products share the cost, each shelling out a fraction of what they would have spend had they been doing a standalone activity.

How GoTry works

A consumer who is visiting the mall along with his family is approached by the GoTry staff and is informed about the products that s/he can sample by registering at the kiosk (via an iPad). Basic demographic information needs to be provided. Now basis the profile of the consumer the system chooses the relevant products available for him / her, which are then dispensed instantly by the GoTry buddy. The client decides what TG to sample their products to and the system offer the product only the eligible consumers, ensuring no riff raft & wastage.

Now, the next time if the same consumer happens to visit again, s/he can simple login to the system and can get new products s/he is eligible for after giving a feedback on the previous products that s/he used.

The entire system is based on technology which ensures maximum efficiency and total transparency in terms of the data and numbers.

Traction

Dhruv churns out the numbers, “In the nearly 6 months of operations of the kiosk at Pacific Mall Delhi - we have had more than 55,000 consumers who have already registered with us and we have given out more than 1.40 lac samples till date. 35% of these consumers have visited the kiosk multiple times and can be called our regular customers, a number that, we hope, will grow with time. There have been 35 well reputed brands form leading FMCG companies namely HUL, L'Oreal, Dabur, Nivea, PepsiCo, Emami, J&J, Reckitt Benckiser, GSK that have sampled their products through Go Try.”

Today GoTry faces no direct competition due to the lack of any similar organized player in the market. Yet, it’s facing trouble making people aware of their offerings.