All of us know Indian consumers are discount lovers. What better business to be in than one in which you provide discounts and options of couponing to consumers at large. MyDala has been in the Indian e-commerce space for the last five years, offering discount coupons to consumers. It is a great place for merchants in Tier 2, Tier 3 cities and even Tier 1 cities to reach out to their target audience. Today we meet Ms. Anisha Singh, CEO and Co-Founder of MyDala and we learn from her how her journey has been and the various things that MyDala has achieved over these years.
Q:Tell us about how this venture started.
A: I was in the US, I moved back here in July 2009 because I thought there was this exciting opportunity in India. I didn’t think at that point I knew that I would stay on here. That’s how we started –2009. Actually, when anybody tells me what are your thoughts, how should an entrepreneur do this – I say, “Like me, without thinking, just jump in. It works!”
You know it’s hard actually when you start and you are trying to sell people on an idea– at that point this concept was too new and e-commerce hadn’t taken off in India. The only companies that had taken off were the Make My Trip-s of the world and so a good parallel was that we were doing something similar in the sense that you were buying online but your experience was offline. So that kind of was an easier sell to get people on board. We started out of a shared office where we had three rooms. We got five people finally, got a team and a band together and it kept growing and it kept growing. By December we ended up launching Delhi and fast forward to today, we are in 196 cities.
Q: What are some milestones that MyDala has achieved over these years?
A: For us every day is a milestone. The good thing is that, we went through extremely hard times and because we went through those, we learnt that, what was going to tide us through,especially when we had a lot of well-funded competition in the market was innovation. So if you were to ask me what the milestone is, I think the biggest milestone was realizing we can do this. If we just keep innovating we will survive. At one point in time MyDala was tracking 48 competitors. The market was flush with couponing sites, discount sites, things like that. Now we are one of the few left, definitely the largest. So a couple of things:Firstly, I think the realization is that if we innovate and we understand our users, we will be just fine. Second was when we came to the realization in 2011 that we’ve got to get on mobile. Before this, in 2011 we just came to know that a lot of our users were accessing MyDala on mobile right at the merchant’s outlet and so right then we said we have to get on mobile and I think since then MyDala has just seen this J curve. Anybody who has been associated with MyDala or has been tracking MyDala will tell you they saw the biggest growth come when they realized that mobile was the big thing.
Q: So at this moment how many merchants have you got on board?
A: Over the lifetime of MyDala we have worked with about 150,000+ merchants – both national brands as well as small businesses in about 200 cities.
Q: Is there a particular composition of merchants coming from a particular location – is it more North-oriented or South?
A: What is interesting is before we had this mobile wave we played in about 9 cities and our ecosystem was fairly small. We figured that this is where the masses were because maybe we didn’t understand for ourselves how big this opportunity was. So we felt this is where we are going to play, this is where we are going to go deep. The good thing was that when we got on mobile and we started seeing traffic come through, we actually realized that the opportunity was so much bigger outside of the Tier 1 cities. So currently about 50% of MyDala’s traffic comes from Non-Tier 1 cities and that is the same consistency in terms of the merchant base that we have. You know it’s obvious when we say we’re only as good as the content. A user will only come to us if we have relevant merchants from their locality. To be able to cater to the Non-Tier 1 cities we have a fairly large Non-Tier 1 merchant base now.
Q: Anything in particular you are seeing about customers in Tier 2 cities, Tier 3 cities compared to Tier 1? Any particular trends?
A: Handling customers is a complete lifecycle. You start them slow, you start them small, get them used to different deals, so that they understand. I think customers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are definitely more enthusiastic about trying it out,especially on mobile. 80% of our traffic comes from mobile. So we definitely see that the transactions on mobile in Non-Tier 1 are very heavily weighted on that. I think they are eager to try out more and more stuff. We just did a pilot in a small city on groceries. It worked really well for us. You go outside of the Non-Tier 1 cities – Siliguri and places like that, merchants as well as users are extremely enthusiastic to try out new stuff; which I actually would not have thought when we started this company in 2009.
Fast forward to today, we are in 196 cities
Q: In your view of this market you think the opportunity in the online space is waiting to crack open in Tier 2, Tier 3 cities and there aren’t many people offering something to them?
A: Because we are a hybrid – we are online to offline –the opportunity of location-based marketing is Tier 2, Tier 3 cities.We talk about it, we hear of FMCG companies talking about it, that Non-Tier 1 is the Holy Grail. Everybody is trying to reach that. Everybody understands that’s mass India. So there is definitely a very big opportunity there. It’s a matter of being able to seize it. I think we were fortunate that it kind of got smacked on our faces and so we just took it and rolled with it. Would we have intentionally gone that way? No. Was it a brilliant thing that it happened to us? Definitely.
Q: Give us a sense of your offerings and what is your target audience?
A: Our users are of two sets. Our merchants are also our users because we have to make sure that they are happy too and you know we pitch to them and we have a whole team that pitches to them. We talk about the fact that we are a marketing platform for them. MyDala is a marketing platform that’s driven by offers and promotions for a merchant. There is no upfront payment and it’s helping a merchant – a small business or a national brand, target the right audience, at the right place, at the right location. In terms of consumers,we are essentially a couponing network or a couponing gateway. So the way I see MyDala is we will be the go-to place for any need in terms of savings before you shop.
Q: As you mentioned there were 48 competitors when you began five years back. How has the competitive landscape changed and where are you differentiating compared to them?
A: The space has matured. I think if you ask the Industry or Investors they will tell you differently. They will say it’s opened up completely. I think it’s growing the way the U.S or China market did. Initially, there was excitement, there was buzz. A lot of deal sites, couponing sites came up and then the more it matured there were few players left.
In the competitive landscape of the Tier 1 cities there are still a couple of companies. Well actually, there are different hybrid companies doing different things to cater to small businesses as well as national brands in terms of marketing and different variations of it.The competitive landscape outside of the Tier 1 cities, in terms of merchants being able to market themselves,was essentially Just Dial. That’s about it.
Q: What are some new initiatives planned in the next 12‒24 months?
A: Recently, we launched grocery offers. One thing we do at MyDala is always see the user’s perspective. Whenever I go to a Big Bazaar or a small local trade store, one thing I don’t see is the savings that I could get on any type of FMCG or groceries. One of the initiatives that we just launched, which we are extremely excited about is grocery savings. So if you come on MyDala now there is a Groceries tab. It allows you to see all the savings on different things that you would buy on a monthly basis – ghar ka samaan. What we are doing now is building on it. On our app you can create your own grocery lists, you can take the coupons and when you take it to a Big Bazaar or some other place, it will pull out all the savings. It will also keep replicating that list because we don’t deviate in what groceries we buy on a monthly basis. So the idea is to give the user all sorts of savings on a regular basis. We launch credit card offers; we are doing a lot of cool personalization on our app which allows the user to see all kinds of savings. So you will see a lot of that coming through in the next 12‒18 months.
The biggest milestone was realizing, if we keep innovating we will survive
Q: If we look at groceries and we look at personalization, these are two things that you are trying. Other than groceries,are there any particular categories that have surprised you?
A: I think the one category that surprised me is Health and Beauty,especially tattoos in Health and Beauty. Before I started this company I actually knew nothing about a tattoo; I am now officially the expert on tattoos even though I don’t have one. It’s interesting. It’snot only the college students getting them. We had our audience segmented, we said this is the category and this is the age group for tattoos. It completely surprised us that was not the case. We have 40–year-old housewives who are extreme shoppers of tattoos. Our Health and Beauty section actually is head on head and sometimes exceeds Restaurants on certain days. Health and Beauty for us encompasses everything including dental, medical check-ups, everything. I don’t think I actually thought that it would be one of our biggest sectors. So it’s interesting to see it go that route. I thought travel would be, because people are already familiar with the concept. But Health and Beauty took off and now Groceries.
Q: Tell us more about the alliances that you have formed, especially the ones with the telecom companies?
A: MyDala has grown and become profitable on a very small funding basis. One thing that we knew was we needed alliances and partner networks that would essentially give us pan-India reach. About three years ago we started talking to telecoms, our first partner being Vodafone. Now we partner with everybody, we partner with Airtel, Aircel, Docomo, everybody. Essentially what it does for us is, it gives us reach in a way that no TV, no radio could have given us. It’s also helped us grow as the largest mobile coupon network because we’ve had these fortuitous alliances.
Q: How have you approached digital marketing and traffic acquisition over these years?
A: I am of the belief that the best business models or the best things that we all talk about like the Facebook-s of the world, the Whatsapp-s of the world have all been viral. There has been no aggressive marketing, oddly enough. Even Just Dial actually only started doing marketing before they went public. They weren’t marketing but yet all of us would be using it. At MyDala, we’ve grown more so on viral. We’ve let users come and talk to other users about MyDala. That being said, some of the cool things we do is we have a fairly tight association with Bollywood. I believe in India – Astrology, Bollywood and Cricket always sell. So we try and tailgate on that. We did a marketing promo for Don where you got a chance to meet Shahrukh Khan. There was buzz created and coupons around seeing the movie at a discounted rate. Same for Kahaani, same for a lot of movies. Our most recent one being Action Jackson which just happened literally this Friday. Our users actually get something different, rather than just see a TV ad. It’s something that they can cherish. On a local level we get the merchant involved, so we’ll do something called a Beautilicious Week where users get rewarded and they go into different salons. Or a pub crawl which is fairly new in India, where users go from pub to pub drinking free of cost. Of course we have a taxi service and discounts after that as well – you know, cool stuff like this. We’ve always wanted to do something different and it’s worked for us, I would like to think.
Q: Any particular age group or a segment there where you see a higher propensity?
A: It’s because of the medium we are in and because of the generation being the way it is. Of course we see the age group of 18 to 26 being extremely aggressive. That being said, there are still cases where I am fascinated with our users and what they do. Like housewives and tattoos or we had somebody’s mom who booked a dinner for him and his girlfriend because she wanted him to propose to her. So there’s very cool stuff and it happens over mobile and there are all these sweet stories that we get to hear.
Q: When you look at the Org Structure that you have how have you gone about dividing roles and responsibilities?
A: We’re a fairly flat organization – you’ve seen it, it’s very ‘start-up-y’. We’ve consciously kept it that way. Once you lose that start-up vibe you start moving towards a slower pace which we cannot afford. We might be five years old but the industry is moving so fast, everything has to be fairly fast. So our organization is relatively young and everybody on the team is fairly young. It’s fairly tech-heavy, the organization, and sales-heavy; so that’s how we are split.
We have worked with about 150,000+ merchants
Q: Give us some insights on how you approach merchants in the process of creating the offers and how long do these campaigns typically run?
A: It is an entire 360 degree process. It’s about identifying a merchant, it’s about understanding the reviews for the merchant, is it in a good location, etc. Once we get a hold of all that, we check –have users searched for this on MyDala, ever? Once we know, we’ll sit with the merchant and go over the deal that we think our user would like. After that’s done, there is literally ghost calling that happens to make sure that the deal’s live, the merchant’s going to service it. There are reviews, so it’s a full 360 cycle that we walk them through.
Q: And typically a campaign with a merchant would last for how long?
A: It could be a month, it could be two weeks, and it could be three months. It depends on what the merchant is looking for. We have had merchants who have been with us since 2009. We pitched them initially like VLCC and they are still with us to date. So we’re just lucky in that way.
Q: In such cases are the creatives done by your team?
A: Everything is done by us. We do the creatives, we’ll create a merchant, everything. A lot of the merchants and a lot of the SMEs actually have no web presence. So for us it’s about helping take a merchant who is offline, online. So we say it’s ‘O2O’. For a user it’s an online to offline transaction but for a merchant it’s offline to online. This is what they have been hearing about. For them it’s the Holy Grail. They hear about e-commerce taking off, every day there’s some news in the industry and you read about it in the newspapers. For them getting that web presence is extremely important. So we’ll help them, we’ll create a page for them, a web presence for them, helping them get feedback from users, giving them Facebook promotions, Google promotions, all that. It’s literally a full lifecycle that we’ll do with them. We say we’ll work ‘O2O’ in both ways.
Q: What has been your approach towards talent acquisition and talent development?
A: For talent acquisition we’ve gone about it slightly differently than everyone else. I believe that hard work and loyalty go a long way. So talent acquisition is done on the same route. We have a fairly young team. It’s a hard working team. It knows how to innovate. So it’s not like in the news where we hear every day that there are so many IIM guys being recruited or IIT guys. We have all those in our team. But over and above everything else what is valued here is whether you are innovating, how hard you are working and whether you have the passion. So I like the hunger. Somebody was joking – you must have a really hungry team because you keep talking about hunger-hunger. I said yes, I want hungry people. We have a big cafeteria to prove it. But in general these are the same people who want to prove something in life, who want to actually accomplish something and I’m proud to have a team like this.
Currently, about 50% of MyDala’s traffic comes from Non-Tier 1 cities and that is the same consistency in terms of the merchant base that we have
Q: Anything that from a cultural point of view that you are focused on instilling in the team of youngsters who come in?
A: Like I said, loyalty above all and innovation. We like people giving their ideas so nothing here is suppressed. It’s a fairly flat organization. You come up with an idea; you are mostly cheered for it. Somebody came with an idea of trying to do something for Christmas. So bravo to them. We’ll always do something funny and funky. I like that. We like loyal people with integrity. The way we like to look at it is when we started we were a small family, and though we’ve grown we still like to think of ourselves as a family. That’s what we have tried to incorporate in our growing culture.
Q: What are some of your predictions for the e-commerce market in India?
A: The first thing to look out for is how does this play out. The valuations right now, cool as they are for the people who have gotten them, are extremely skewed. It’s also created an unrealistic bubble because there’s all these middle-tier and lower-tier dotcoms that have started. So it would be cool to see because I think a lot of them are doing such funky, amazing stuff. I’d like to see how they evolve, whether they get amalgamated into these big dotcoms or what happens to them in terms of e-commerce. What I’d like to see going away is the cash on delivery aspect of it. I don’t think that’s pure e-commerce. If we just get that and the logistics aspect right and some of these great start-ups in different niches come about…We should be watching out for that in the next twelve months. E-commerce right now has gotten so much focus, there is so much stuff happening in different verticals and niches off of it that.That would be cool to watch out for.
Q: What are some of the learnings being an entrepreneur in India, given your background in having come from the States?
A: That’s a tough one. I always try and sound intelligent on this one and I never quite get it. I think the biggest learning as an entrepreneur in general is you cannot quit. There are going to be bad days and there are going to be terrible days. If you think that this is it, then that is it. You can’t have that as an entrepreneur. So I think that’s my biggest learning to date. I do think in terms of environment India is changing but the U.S. definitely tends to be a more positive environment to have a thriving business. However, the support infrastructure I have here in terms of family would not have existed for me there.
Q: It’s been five years you guys have started, you’ve just got funding, it’s about 350 people. What in your opinion is the secret of success of MyDala?
A: The secret to success of MyDala is very simple. We didn’t get funding easily and we’ve always had to work for our livelihood. I think the secret has been literally not quitting when you are down. You get back up and say we’re going to make this happen no matter what and innovating. It’s literally those two things that have carried MyDala to where we are right now. You know we’ve got funding now but we don’t let ourselves forget that and so if you talk to us we’re still extremely careful and cautious.
