Yembrace

This was the project that I worked on in my undergraduate and was funded by Innohabit Technologies.

The objective of this product was to enhance Offline Retail Marketing and overcome some of the challenges.

• Crowd management over the festivals and weekends and lack of visibility into balking rate and window shoppers.
• Lack of visibility into consolidating feedback from customers.
• Being unaware of potential customers around the store and their interests and needs.
• Providing a cheaper and an effective for the promotion of products and advertisements.

Our solution was to develop a strategy that focuses on the potential customers who are literally in close proximity to the store and the product. It is based on the idea that a customer is more likely to show interest in something that is already nearby.

This product used Bluetooth technology to reach a potential customer. Once a visitor is within a certain proximity of the space, a message or information is sent to their mobile devices automatically. It sends the concise information about the product and promotions to the customers.

Some of the key benefits of this product were:

• Increase in footfall, as the window shopper were attracted into the store with attractive personalized offers.
• Conversion, Contextual ads and offers influenced last minute impulsive buyers.
• Feedback, push feedback from the customer as he walks out of the store.

The product was launched on mobile (Android) as well as on web platform. The mobile platform consisted of 2 Android Apps, one for the general public (shoppers) and the other for the clients of our product (shop owners).

The cloud-based web platform provided the clients with our product with a feature selectively sending push notifications to influence customer based on the specific interests. It also allowed setting campaign rules to run an ad campaign on a specific day/time.

Some of the screenshots of the App.

Challenges to this approach:

• It is limited to the Bluetooth/beacon technology. Though we extended this to the wifi stack was a router acted as a beacon. But the potential limitation was that the wifi/Bluetooth adapter must be switch on the devices of the customer.
• It was limited to the smartphone devices using Android. Though we were involved in developing an IOS app.
• The initial investment of installation of beacons all around the store was significant.
• There were very few early adopters as the Indian market was not ready.

We successfully implemented this product in one of the malls in Bangalore, India. But the business model and the market were not favorable for the product to take off.

This was a very enriching experience for me not only from a technical point of view but also from a leadership and business understanding of a retail enterprise.