Believing in the power of social media: Aldoshik, an online platform for Rewards and Recognitions

The fact that our online identities directly affect our real-life identity is no longer surprising. Companies looking to hire go through arduous processes of taking a look at your social feeds of the past, colleges have a look at the sort of content posted online by prospective students, people tend to care a lot about a ‘like’ on their page, etc. It only seems natural now that people should be rewarded online as well, for their real-life pursuits.

Ankur Kumar, Founder of Aldoshik Technologies, had the same idea when he launched a SaaS platform for team Rewards and Recognition (R&R) catering to employees, volunteers, and students, etc.

“We’ve created a system that divides the whole process in four simple steps: Recognize, Reward, Redeem and Analyze,” says Ankur. He explained the four steps in greater detail:

• Recognize – Set a task for the user or the team using objectives or circles. Objectives are individual tasks assigned to users that carry rewards with them upon completion. Circles are team milestones which also carries rewards upon completion.
• Reward – Peer-to-peer (including managers, leaders, teachers, etc.) rewarding of gems and certificates. ‘Gems’ is a virtual currency that can be redeemed in a marketplace (see below). Certificates are a type of reward that can be downloaded and shared over different social networks with those in your network.
• Redeem – The gems can be redeemed via an online marketplace for vouchers from close to 80 brands or for experiences such as scuba diving, and flying a plane, etc.
• Analytics – This is used to monitor the rewarding, objective completion/milestone achievement and subsequent impact of the rewards system.

Aldoshik is based out of Delhi and Mumbai with an 11 member team (most joined as interns) that works towards maintaining the platform and convincing companies of the utility of their product. “Most companies are under the impression that appraisals and salary hikes are enough to retain star performers. The biggest challenge has been to convince them to try our platform,” says Ankur.

Aldoshik’s R&R system has seen its use in the Real Estate Sector with companies using a combination of monetary and non-monetary rewards (certificates) to keep the agents motivated. Another young startup also found great use in the non-monetary recognition system. “They wanted to motivate and retain their team, but didn’t have enough cash to pay large salaries to the employees,” Ankur explains. “The e-rewards and e-certificates helped them greatly,” he adds.

Most of Aldoshik’s marketing is done via Google AdSense for online marketing, and word-of-mouth in the offline space. “Since we’re bootstrapped we are constrained by our budget. We attend a lot of HR events and seminars to build networks,” explained Ankur. The company has recently completed their beta phase with six of their clients, and the feedback has been positive.

“We’re currently looking for investment for the business. Along the way, while meeting a lot of investors, I’ve picked up some great tips and advice. I think the best was, ‘You can’t rule the ocean with what you learnt in the well’,” ends Ankur.