Loyalty centric consumer platform SmartPocket raises Rs 1.5 Cr funding led by Sol Primero
SmartPocket, a mobile app which connects brick-n-mortar businesses to their loyal customers, has raised between Rs. 1-1.5Cr in a seed round funding by early stage investment firm Sol Primero and angel investor Rajiv Mehta, CEO with Arvind Group. Following the round Presha Paragash of Sol Primero, who has earlier invested in Zostel and RidingO, joins board of SmartPocket.
Mayank Shah, co-founder of SmartPocket said that the funds are going to be used to product engineer the new avatar of the platform and to acquire users and partner businesses. He added,
The goal will be to reach user base of more than half a million by year end and achieve a 100% increase rate in merchant tie ups on monthly basis.
The company will also be moving to native app from the current HTML version.
SmartPocket which started out as a digital pocket of loyalty cards, automatically figures out the loyalty memberships a user holds using her phone number. These cards are stacked on SmartPocket app updated with points and personalized offers.
Kiran Shashtri, CEO, SmartPocket said
Personal communication has rapidly moved from snail mail to emails to text messages to exchanging photos and videos on FB/WhatsApp. But customer communication by brick-n-mortar businesses has not kept pace. Companies use loyalty programs to engage with customers, but how many carry cards or know the value it brings to them. Traditional players also need to take a cue from modern e-commerce players who engage with customers at opportune time using mobile push notifications and social media. SmartPocket is a marketplace for repeat business that brings in all such tools, but positions the brand right in front of the users.
Started by Goldman Sachs alumni Kiran Shastri and Mayank Shah last year, SmartPocket has managed to attract retail brands like Puma, People and Peter England as their partner brands. The company is incubated at NASSCOM 10K program and later picked by Google for its first ever Indian Launchpad program.
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The founders are being mentored by retail industry stalwarts Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO of Retailers Association of India (RAI) and Rajiv Mehta, who started PUMA’s business in India from scratch.
“The loyalty industry in India is mired by the painful usage of plastic cards and tracking of points. We believe that the SmartPocket product has the ability to drive out inefficiencies of carrying multiple loyalty cards in one's wallet. As the customer engagement in India moves beyond plastic and points, we believe that the team has the experience and understanding required to build a product that will be the winner in this space,” said Presha.