With the pandemic rejigging the ways brands interact with their consumers, companies are now facing challenges with consumer engagement and retention as life returns to normal.
Buyers have evolved. So have their communication channel preferences. Brands today are getting more data-driven, consumer-centric and hence more engaging than ever. Driving customers to an app is a tough feat but holding on to them is far tougher. It calls for in- app experiences tailored to both brands and its customers to build loyalty and open another channel of revenue generation. Gluedin, a software as a service (SaaS) provider for developing in-app community, takes pride in doing it quite well for its clients spanning E-Commerce, media and FMCG companies. Company’s founder Puneet Johar, an IIT and IIM aluminous, believes that in order to maximise ROI in the fiercely competitive industry, brands must strengthen engagement and retention methods by moving beyond installs and other conventional practices. Excerpts from an exclusive tete-e-tete with Johar:
ADVERTISEMENT
1. What is the future outlook for the specialised service of in-app user engagement?
With the advent of 5g, in the next 5-10 years, every app or every website in the world will have to be video enabled and gamified for app engagement. These two things, video-enabling and gamification are going to drive app engagement globally. That’s quite clear. You can already see it. The amount of time everybody spends on videos and gamified -not gaming - but gamified things like challenges, leader boards, hashtags, points, is quite substantial. This is where the whole app engagement space is going.
2. Have App makers started to value this service as an important tool to maintain customer stickiness?
Absolutely! It’s early days but already we have about 10 case studies in the last three months that underscore the importance of in-app user engagement exercises. We are serving companies like Viacom, Threes Cricket, Creator’s Lab and we have multiple customers coming in every month. We are also having preliminary talks with global majors in consumer brand space. An announcement in this regard is on the anvil. Brands have started acknowledging the fact that engagement with new and existing users can be secured via effective and customised onboarding, engaging content and referral programmes among others.
3. Which are the sectors that use this service the most?
In three main sectors we were finding the most traction: media brands, e-commerce and consumer brands. These are the three main customer focus areas for us.
4. What is your global footprint as a SaaS provider?
We are a Singapore headquartered company, open globally. We launched 6 months ago. The initial markets are south-east Asia and Middle East. We are planning to launch in the US next month through our channel partners.
5. What is India's contribution to your overall revenue?
At the moment it is 50% of our overall revenue.
6. Who are the customers/companies you work with?
We work with Viacom, Threes Cricket, Creators Lab, Date the Ramp, Junio. These are our 5 main customers right now.
7. When are you going to receive private equity funding and what is the quantum you are looking at?
Our plan is to do our next round of funding in the next 6 months, sometime in Q1 or Q2 of 2023.
8. How many rounds of funding have you had till now?
We’ve just had one round, which includes the founder, which is me, plus some angels, and collectively we’ve put in more than 2.5 million into the business.
9. What could be possible future diversification in your service?
No, we believe app engagement is a huge space which is video and gamification driven. We aver that there is a big roadmap of features that we need in the next 24 months. The evolution will never stop. We will evolve as we learn more and more about app engagement. We will keep adding more features into it. There is so much to experiment and implement in the space we are currently in. Hence, we don’t see any diversification of service as such.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
