Thursday, March 28

NearU, an Online to Offline App Signs Up 6000 Retailers in 6 Months

NearU App, an Online to Offline (O2O) App Signs up 6000 Retailers in 6 Months Including Marquee Brands, Empowering Them to Push Deals to Their Target Customers, Anytime, Anywhere.

The Indian Retail Industry today comprises of 7.5% organized retail, 92% unorganized retail and a meager 0.50% of e-tail. This clearly reflects the scope of tapping the offline retail market space at various levels. Hence, a fleet of retail-centric hyper local, apps have lately entered the app marketplace, with their business model revolving around a huge chunk of participation from the retailers. Now the question arises that how many of them, in the real sense, provide a value proposition for the retailers.

Along with the users, even the vendors nowadays are facing app fatigue, or rather, collaboration fatigue. In a scenario like this, retail vendors willingly signing up with an app merely on the basis of the merit of the product, is not only rare but also refreshing. This is because, as entrepreneurs, they are always inclined towards measuring the value proposition of the tie-up as against the time and efforts it demands from their end.

As studies suggest, users eventually delete 80 to 90 per cent of apps, and about a fifth of apps are opened just once. Most of them are uninstalled essentially because users just didn’t use them very often. Hence, for the apps to be able to provide footfalls and business to the retailers, they need to keep the users engaged and stay on their home screens. Not only that, the offers and deals apps, need to understand the needs of the retailers along with the users, need to provide them with specific targeted solutions to their everyday problems, and if nothing, just make their life easier.

Mumbai-based ‘NearU Mobile’ has released their NearU app in February 2016. NearU is also a retail-centric, location-based hyper-local app. However, as opposed to the other coupon apps, NearU follows an online to offline model which gives complete control to the retailers to push any deal to any area-specific group of consumers, at anytime, from anywhere.

NearU has collaborated with the brick-and-mortar locations of retailers across categories and has integrated their deals and offers with its offline shopping experience. NearU claims to provide them with a platform to showcase their offers and brand communication, by targeting a vast bracket of target audience demographics of 9 wide categories, namely, apparels, accessories, food & beverage, electronics, health & beauty, entertainment, home & living, hotels and automobiles. This serves the basic purpose of brand recall, visibility and reach for the retailers to potentially increase their business.

Geo-targeting feature of NearU allows retailers to send tailored messages to customers of a specific geographic area. This is crucial to consider, since people from different locations tend to have different interests and needs. Hence, in-store retailers with outlets in various locations are leveraging this technology for better customer targeting and fulfilling the need of customers right when they need to fill a gap.

“Pushing focussed targeted messages to potential target customers and tapping them when and where they are in the mood for purchase is every restaurateur’s dream. NearU offering that, and the ease with which we can push different offers in different areas of the same city is what made us exclusively tie-up with NearU,” says Riyaaz Amlani, CEO, Impresario Hospitality which owns several restaurant brands such as Social, Smokehouse Deli, Salt Water Café & Mocha.

Provogue, INOX, Burger King, McDonald’s, Dominos, Pizza Hut, KFC, Olive, Taj Hotels, Lacoste, BMW, Calvin Klein, Being Human, Arrow, Indian Terrain, Shaze Luxury, Dr. Batra’s, Gold’s Gym, Enrich Salons, Godrej Interio, Social, SmokeHouse Deli, Durian, Hometown, E-zone, Reliance Digital, Croma, Smaaash, Adlabs Imagica, etc., are some of the top brands in association with NearU app.

“We are very excited to partner with NearU and we feel it’s a great way to reach out to our customer audiences who can be targeted locally, therefore increasing our reach,” says Dr. Akshay Batra, Managing Director, Dr. Batra’s Positive Health Clinics.

Today, where there is an app available for every niche area of necessity, the last thing a retailer would want is when an association takes away from the straightforwardness of his retail business. For the very reason, NearU positions itself in a way that does not stress the retailers while catering to their need for pushing deals in a customized and intelligent way. While supporting the idea of ‘touch & feel’ factor while shopping, NearU empowers offline retail while encouraging the consumers to go the traditional way.