Making a big difference

In today’s day and age, there are large scale multi-billion dollar e-commerce vendors, causing an industry imbalance against small traders and service providers. The latter generally don’t come with a big advertisement budget to fight this competition. And it’s not just a loss of their market share but also often potential neighbourhood customers are swayed away to the larger players.

Even with customers, it happens quite often that when they are travelling, they are driven to what is available in the nearby vicinity than what they actually want. This is exactly what led Ravindhar Achchi Rangarajan to start ‘Fly2Spot’, a hyperlocal marketplace where small traders and service providers can build their own marketplace and reach their customers. The startup began with a pilot, expanded to Chennai and is presently available in Bengaluru.

“‘Fly2Spot’ is a marketplace app that lets users locate, explore and find the products of their need available in their neighbourhood, even when they are on the move. The users can experience the virtual tour of the stores, browse through all the available products and get to know the various offers,” says Ravindhar.

“While at home or even on the move, you can still find your choice of products, services and best deals with a single tap on your mobile phone. You might be searching for a product in the whole city, which may be available in your nearby store. You can explore all these products in the entire city just by exploring ‘Fly2Spot’,” he adds.

And how do sellers benefit from it? Explains Ravindhar, “The traditional shop owner with a restricted target audience in a particular area does not have a simple platform to showcase his products or deals without much investment. ‘Fly2Spot’ is a special business platform for these sellers. They can easily create their stores, add products, display deals and target their nearby audience at a very low cost. They can also customise their shop anytime.”

The users in ‘Fly2Spot’, he informs, are mostly serious buyers who look for a particular product on the move. They can easily reach out to the customers in an area using customised ads. “We guide them to go for a short and crisp title and an image with a description, that will grab everyone’s attention in their locality,” he says.

The app is presently available for Android users on the Google Playstore. Ravindran has also created ‘SafeOut’, a women safety and security product, designed to prevent violence and crime against women, which will be launched shortly. ‘SafeOut’ will connect the demand for help, real time, during distress and emergency situations to their kith and kin, nearby social networking volunteers and law enforcement agencies with just a single tap. It will also provide a platform for the collaboration among the kith and kin as well as volunteers and law enforcement agencies for an effective rescue mission.