Interview By Ujwal Kumar
Chief Reporter, wowgadgetguru.com
(Interview Questioner on Pennyful.in: Reponses to be attributed to Ravitej Yadalam, Founder & CEO, Pennyful)
1) Can you brief us about an overview of Pennyful.in? What are the services you are providing to the customers in India?
Pennyful was started by Ravitej Yadalam, a young engineer from Bangalore in 2010. Pennyful his first entrepreneurial venture today consists of Pennyful.com and Pennyful.in. Pennyful.com is an online cashback program for the US market. Pennyful.com currently has over 2500 partners across the US and over 30 million products showcased through the platform.
After the success of Pennyful.com in the US, Ravitej started Pennyful.in in late 2011. Pennyful.in is an online cashback program targeting the Indian Retailer and Consumer. Pennyful.in was founded in late 2011.
Pennyful.in offers cashback to shoppers on transactions with partner brands in a vast array of verticals. Pennyful through its cashback program aims at eliminating the hassle of inconvenient, rigid redemption options offered to shoppers.
Pennyful also offers a Loyalty Rewards Solution to the Indian Market. The loyalty rewards market although crowded, innovation on large scale is somewhat lacking in the country today. Regular loyalty programs adopted by brands do not usually give any real benefit to the consumer. And those that benefit the consumer are complicated, difficult to use or too expensive for the brand to adopt. Pennyful with its Loyalty Rewards Program addresses these very issues.
Any e-commerce website can benefit from the Pennyful platform, just as retailers can such as cafes, restaurants, apparel stores, accessory stores, furnishing stores, clinics and hospitals. Pennyful is open to be associated with brands across all sectors and sizes given the flexibility of our offerings and robustness of our platform.
Pennyful will play a major role in revolutionizing the concept of loyalty in e-commerce and retail industries making it more beneficial to the consumer through seamless real-time rewards. In the coming years we see an increased adoption of such programs and increased innovation in the kind of programs that will be in use by consumer-centric retailers and brands.
2) How would you differentiate yourself from your competitors?
There is a need for a low cost program in the market that benefits the consumer with real rewards and the brand as well. Our differentiator is that we are able to address this need directly with our program. Pennyful’s program allows an establishment to seamlessly reward the consumer in real time, thereby drastically reducing costs of brand awareness and creating consumer loyalty.
3) Can you elaborate cashback shopping of Pennyful?
The cashback program at Pennyful.in is designed to make it simple for the shopper to earn cashback.
Step 1: Registered shopper comes to Pennyful.in
Step 2: Shoppers clicks on the e-store link on Pennyful.in where they would like to shop
Step 3: Shopper is re-directed to the e-store
Step 4: They shop as always
Step 5: The order is tracked by Pennyful and credited to the user in 1-7 days.
Step 6: User can redeem cashback via Cheque or Bank Transfer, 30-90 days from the date of purchase
4) What will be your focus in coming years?
With the large potential e-commerce market in India, Pennyful looks to expand the user base in the country. With India adding a large number of internet users every month there is tremendous opportunity for us to grow. Increasing acceptance by consumers for online shopping and the change in mindsets will see the Indian e-commerce market growing to great scales. We will look to expand our horizon in sectors we work in and brands we work with.
Affiliate marketing which is relatively untapped in the Indian context has a lot of potential. We also would like to tap into the market and take advantage as an early mover for cashback in India, with our expertise and experience in the US market for the same.
With favorable regulatory changes and the government now allowing FDI for multi-brand retail there will be a lot of new players in organized retail and hence more opportunities for partnerships in the Indian market.
