Innovative Customer Engagement platform through Mobile: Crown-it

Mobile has become key enabler for customer engagement and proactive marketing practices. Crown-It is an interesting startup from Gurgaon and is aggresively working in the area of mobile applications and innovating ways to engage with the market.

In an exclusive interaction with SMEStreet, Sameer Grover, Founder and CEO, Crown-it shared an overview about the the Indian mobile applications market and it's relevance for the Indian market.

The edited excerpts:

What are the key attractions and unique offerings by Crown-it ? 

Some of the various unique features and attributes that Crown-it gives its users are:-

1. Discovery: The app uses phone's geo-location feature to suggest users all the nearby places where they can go to avail the services that they are looking for. (Currently, F&B)

You can easily know at how much distance the Outlet is located, and you can navigate yourself easily to the place with just one tap.

The users can easily know the Cash back deals that they'll get there, apart from other details such as the cuisine served there, the rating and feedback of that particular outlet, among other things.

2. Friction-less deals: The customer does not have to get print-outs of coupons and cards, like most other apps. Nor is there an extra loyalty card that one must carry in their wallets at all times, or a free dessert that they'll get on their 2nd and 3rd check-in.

The app gives you real Cashback (in the form of Crowns) via a simple and intuitive process - just click bill picture and send.

3. The app is designed specifically for the mobile-first and mobile-only India. The app provides multiple features under one jacket.

4. The deals provided by Crown-it are both user as well as outlet specific. What this means is, each user will have a personalized experience with the app and he will see the deals which are exclusive to him. Also, outlets can give special deals and discounts to our users, and the app interface will reflect that.

5. There are no pre-bookings or flags required. The user only need to check the deals in the app, visit the outlet and claim the deal once they've received the bill.

What is the biggest opportunity and challenge that you see in the space you operate in? 

The greatest opportunity that Crown-it has as an enterprise is that the space of 'Lifestyle, Health & Essentials' is vast and open.

So far, there are no other company that is offering such friction-less deals to the users in the Marketing industry.

Our penetration into the F&B domain has been very fruitful and we're currently the only and one-of-its-kind players in this industry.

As for the challenges, the biggest one for us right now is to really wring and make the best of the First Mover Advantage that we have. For this, we need to move very fast in the right directions .

How do you ensure the collaborative user response?

The response from our users has been overwhelming. Over 90% of our users have come via referrals and word-of-mouth, and only 10% through paid marketing.

We give our users (both referral and referee) benefits such as 'extra Cash (in the form of Crowns) and other rewards.

How and what kind of technology is being used?

For the development of the app, We've used Native Android Application. Although this makes the development expensive and time & effort consuming, but it makes the app highly reliable and fast.

At Server level, we're using the latest technology that can handle multiple requests at the same time. We're also developing equally efficient apps for other platforms like iOS and Windows.

Please elaborate about your investments in India? 

We raised Angel round funding in July last year. We are currently looking to raise Series A funding.

How do you see the future years ahead for ​Crown-it​?

By 2018, we plan to have our presence in 25 cities in India, with over 2 crore members using the app. We will be driving a GMV of Rs.600 crore per month at across all categories, i.e Lifestyle, health & Fitness namely salons, spas, recreation, groceries etc.

What kind of cashbacks people can avail?

People can avail personalized deals at the Outlet/business of their choice with Crown-it. The Cashback is in the form of Crowns, that gets accumulated in the app.

The user can then redeem the Cashback through this wallet through various ways including online shopping, phone bill payment, charity, movie tickets etc, via the app itself.

How many people are already using this app, and what is the response​?

Currently, we have acquired 25,000 users based out of Delhi-NCR (majority in Gurgaon). We are driving a monthly business of 1 Cr to Restaurants across Gurgaon. The response, altogether, has been truly overwhelming.