The Eyopto Story - A B2B2C Mobile Platform For The Global Eye Industry

I never thought I would start up something for the eye industry. But, in the end, someone has to be to start something. And this wasn't accidental at all.

Over the social media, someone approached my 20 yrs old friend, Deepak Suri to start an optical chain in Delhi for which we had a couple of meetups. I wasn't interested at all to support him, as my friend asked for my suggestions. This could have been a big project for my friend.

Something else was cooking up in my mind for the eye industry which I hadn't shared with Deepak. He was being approached for an optical chain project many times later, but then I had to share my vision with him when I realized I needed him and his experience to start this. He also had his own sales team under his company which would be an asset in bringing registrations for our project. Two is better than one.

Deepak excitingly asked me to start this project and I immediately booked the domain & hosting.

And, Eyopto was born.

We wanted to ensure that our app is the world's first in its own category and make it a one-stop source for the whole eye industry comprising eyewear, eye care, & ophthalmic sub-industries.

We implemented 4 modules on our platform;

1. Business Directory
2. Classified Marketplace
3. Event Listings
4. Job Portal

Eyopto targets business user who wants to connect & showcase their offerings to others without any restrictions along with the professional users who would be able to capture new opportunities either with their jobs or starting a business of their own in the future. Any manufacturer, retailer, importer, exporter, trader, distributor or brand could join us from the eye industry.

I started working on the Eyopto website and after like 45 days it was set to be live. We started running Facebook Ads in selected states of India and were surprised to see the traffic coming in. We both were jumping off the chairs.

But, it all failed.

• We were not getting any business or professional user sign-ups.

• Our website was mobile responsive, but not user-friendly as compared with mobile apps.

• Most of the users were coming from their mobile and rural areas.

With failures, we learn.

And we learnt to take the right steps ahead. We both sat down, had long discussions, and thereby started working on the mobile application as our solution to all the above reasons.

We rolled out our business directory module initially and were live by the end of March 2020. We started getting signups from our mobile application being user friendly now. Today, we have 600+ users including business owners and working professionals from urban and rural locations from India.

Other features are still under development for Android & iOS and we hope to bring Eyopto forward to more businesses and professionals in India and across the globe later on.

We both have been approaching investors to look into our product and everyone's found it interesting. We just have to work more on user traction and build a customer base on Eyopto. We want to make Eyopto as the Google of the eye industry.

Two close friends!

Twenty years old friendship!

One startup!

One failure!

This was the story of Eyopto!

But this is not the end of our story, in fact.

It begins from here.

Stay tuned!