Hello everyone
I am Mayur.
The opportunities and entrants in the Hyperlocal and other just in time services are well known to the startup world.
There is a lot of scope in these sectors. But one thing we all know from bottom of heart – the shops around the corner or the brick and mortar shops we mostly buy from are going nowhere in near future.
In case you have gone through recent news of the offline retailers doing good sales this year, is a proof that the discounted e-commerce is not going to make that big a change in habits of the consumers. So shops are going to stay! Now the scope lies in better way to discover and browse these shops. That’s what we are trying to do at locateshoppy.
One of the triggers for the idea was a post on therodinhoods by a seller unsatisfied with flipkart, snapdeal and some other online marketplaces.
There we thought – one day the online subsidized sell will end and so there will be no more 50% – 90% – offers. Also if this is coming through innovation in sourcing, the same innovation will be adapted by the offline sellers resulting into not much difference in pricing. Then the offline sellers will also be able sell at a competitive price (they don’t need to package the product, instant cash, no delivery charges for buyer, etc). Any ways that’s a big topic. And an experienced expert can comment on it better.
But yes, we will still need access to the offline sellers i.e. shops around the corner – online!
So we started building locateshoppy. Along with that we were exploring the field and competition. We came across a huge number of hyperlocal startups catering to different domains. We thought no issues! Let’s do something like this – just help customers find shops around them and then let them decide what they want to do, visit the shop and buy it or enquire or order (COD as of now). We settled on some features and have completed development of a version. You can have a look at it here. We are operating in Pune and plan to scale everywhere soon.
So our appeal to TRH community:
We are a small team working on a service which helps people search for a local business on map. After locating the nearby shop for particular service, the user can contact the shop for inquiry or place order (Cash on Delivery). We are planning to display the products in the future but as of now plan is to start just with the shop information. Also a user can follow a particular shop for offers in the future.
We place our self into two categories – local search and hyper-local.
We request you to please share your general feedback/criticism on the idea and product.
Please don’t hesitate to tear us apart on this if we are doing anything wrong. We are aware that – we can be classified as a ‘me too startup’ in these categories. But we and I think everybody in the community, believe that -“Shehar me har kone pe ek tapari hoti hai aur chalti bhi hai“. But we also believe in being different and staying a step ahead of the competition!
Have a great day 🙂
Mayur Morey
mayur@locateshoppy.com