How this platform helps connect consumers and businesses with their product Tellofy Touch
Imagine you order one of your favourite dishes on the restaurant menu. You like the dish so much that you want to compliment the chef. You ask for a feedback form and fill it up neatly.
But, have you ever wondered what happens to the precious feedback left by many of you?
When inquisitive Saurabh Majumdar posed the same question at a restaurant, he was deeply disappointed to know that all the feedback forms were just bundled up and stashed in a store.
It showed the gap between businesses and consumers. As a customer, he felt disconnected.
Saurabh thought of building a real-time review and feedback platform for consumers, which would be easy to use, fun, and engaging as well. Simultaneously, the platform would provide tangible business value for the merchant.
According to Saurabh, the idea was to build a robust mechanism to collect feedback effectively and provide actionable insights, which can show ROI and link changes in business drivers to a feedback.
In April 2015, the idea was conceptualised in the form of Tellofy Technologies, a discovery and rating platform using web, mobile, and tablets to allow consumers to voice their experiences in audio, video, and text formats. The other aim of the platform was to target business; and to act as an independent rating platform generating reviews and capturing experiences of consumers on a massive scale.
Saurabh began developing the product in June last year. In February 2016, he launched the final product called Tellofy Touch in the market.
“Tellofy Touch is a tablet-based solution to capture feedback on site from the audience and use cases are events, workshops, and training initiatives. The platform is fully customisable and also supports audio and video modes,” says 42-year-old Saurabh Majumdar, Founder and CEO of Tellofy Technologies. He has been a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in technology and business.
In 1996, he founded his first venture, a chemical trading company in Ahmedabad; and exited in 2001. The same year, he moved to the UK. Two years later, in 2003, he launched a car rental e-commerce company in the UK and expanded operations to the US. In 2014, he exited the venture by selling the company in the US with ROI of 5x to investors and moved to India in June 2015. Tellofy is his third venture.
Product’s use case
Saurabh adds that Tellofy Touch deals in the physical world. Using the technology, the platform is meeting the different needs of companies and users from various segments such as events, workshops in IT & ITES industries, spa and wellness, utilities & food and beverages (F&B), among others..
“In IT and ITES multinational companies, the product is used in internal learning and development initiatives, where they use the product to take feedback on events and workshops from their employees. In Spa & Wellness and F&B segments, the feedback is taken from end consumers. The platform collects all the feedback, which help companies to understand the requirement of the end consumers,” explains Saurabh.
Building metrics
Since the launch of its first product called Tellofy Touch, the platform claims to get some early tractions adding around two new customers every week. In April, it was selected in Amplifi, a Bengaluru-based SaaS accelerator.
It says that it has recently signed a rating and review partnership with Headstart and BHIVE.
Today, Tellofy claims to have over 25 percent response rates, much higher as compared to industry average of 8‑10 percent. It says that its product is simple to implement and priced competitively for SMB and enterprises alike.
The platform is planning to launch the second product variant called Tellofy Connect, which is for e-commerce, travel, hospitality, and transportation. “It will allow businesses to get real-time feedback both at a brand level and at a product level and provide decision-making business insights. This is also based on monthly subscription model,” says Saurabh.
Some of their clients include Headstart Network, BHIVE, Startupsclub (Pan India), 38 Castle Street, Carrots, Sidewalk Cafe, Kolkata Biriyani House, Laundry Basket and Shathayu Ayurveda.
Initial struggles
Saurabh observes that the first hurdle came in the form of team building, which was a bit challenging.
He was new to the Bengaluru startup ecosystem, and most people he met at various forums and seminars were doing different exciting stuff. He spoke to over a 100 people and discussed the idea with them. Eventually, he succeeded to convince a couple of people and started with four people team.
On product side, the main challenge was in collection of review — combatting low response rates along with collecting feedback data quickly, efficiently and in real time.
Expenditure and gains
So far, the platform has pumped in around $100,000, with the bulk of this going into product development, followed by operations and marketing.
The platform aims to make gains though a revenue model based on monthly subscription packages, which is based on feature list.
Market and competition
According to Saurabh, with India likely to have over 500 million people online by 2020 and smartphone penetration growing at 33 percent year-on-year, he feels this is the right time for Tellofy.
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Customer Guru, Cloudcherry, and Fungru are the other platforms that offer similar kind of services in the segment.
However, Tellofy differentiates itself from others as it calls itself the first product in the segment which has text, audio and video modes available across all touch points (web, mobile and tablet onsite).