This Hyderabad-based Hyperlocal Startup creates India’s only Product Discovery & Local Delivery App

Incorporated in 2015 (2nd November, 2015) and headquartered at Hyderabad, India, Bharathi Tech Services Pvt. Ltd.(company name) or brand name Mapprr is the pioneer in Hyperlocal delivery concept bringing it for the first time in India, which offers live availability of the products, on-board, and quick 60 minutes delivery that simplifies the user experience. We are publishing an interview with Mr. Aruna Subhakar, Founder & CEO – Mapprr.

Q.: Please tell us about the founders
Ans.: I am the only founder in the company. While I was working on my Robotic Arm Project in my B.Tech (Mechanical) final year 2015, I was searching for few retail products. In search of which, I roamed from store to store and understood that there is a gap between the retailer and the consumer. These pain points of the customers sow seeds of MAPPRR and I thus started Mapprr in March 2016. The idea took only 6 months of time to be transformed into a service.

Mapprr was initially a website which touched every pain point of the customers showing the live availability of the products eventually ventured into delivery.

In July, 2017, I started looking for a team and was successfully gathered a 10 member team by the end of the year. In January 2018, the iOS & Android App was launched.

Q.: Please tell us about the investors (if any)
Ans: We are currently a bootstrapped company and have been approached by several VC firms.

Q.: What is the problem you are trying to solve? Can you share with us any insights that led you to believe that this is a big enough problem?
Ans: Mapprr smoothens the efforts one puts in to shopping the products. The user need not drive all the way in traffic and pollution till the store to purchase the products of his/her choice. At times, customers may end up not finding what they need, which leaves them frustrated.

Mapprr with its live availability and quick 60 minutes delivery effortlessly simplifies the user experience and complex urban life style. Finding products a costumer needs is very difficult, roaming store to store is a disadvantage! User can use Web or Mobile Application to order from Mapprr!

Q.: Tell us about the Product / Solution. Explain how you went about the Product-Market Fit Process.
Ans: It started with a website then eventually ventured into mobile application adhering to the standard user expectations. The architecture is complex and ever evolving in terms of stability and maturity! We knew exactly to whom we were catering the service to and always have developed the product in terms of the user expectations. We’ve made countless calls to users and found out their experience and the changes they’re expecting from the current version, we’ve gone with the masses! It was easy for us to get the users use the application.

Q.: What is your USP?
Ans: Mapprr exclusively brings you:

• Local delivery in a busy city within 60 Minutes
• Pay online or Pay on delivery, only when the delivery champion reach
• Retain the online shopping experience ordering through Mobile App
• Return us on spot what’s damaged/ not functioning
• Eliminate the possibility of not finding a product, our Delivery champions will fulfill your order
• Stop worrying about the hassles of traffic and pollution in a busy city! Order what you need and we deliver it straight in 60 Minutes
• Choose from a wide variety of Retailers (Spar, Medplus, etc.) and pick only what you need
• Get Exclusive discounts all the time on selected categories
• On every order placed earn Mapprr credits which can be used to purchase on Mapprr
• Earn joining bonus of 50 Mapprr credits and your referral earns 50 Mapprr credits
• Live track your order from your account and stay updated about the order status

Q.: What were your assumptions when you entered the market, learnings that you have?
Ans: A year market research has helped us big time. We exactly know where to target, whom to target and how to target. We’ve extensively gone through shop to shop with 5 interns understanding the retail and its implications on General & Modern Tarde. While the market study is being carried out we’ve seen the success rate and failure models of different start up’s to optimize our solution, though Grofers started as a hyperlocal startup due to some critical issues it moved on to inventory model. We’ve seen and learned from the mistakes and case studies and brought an MVP.

Our ideal customers include housewives, corporate employees and any decent smartphone user who uses mobile applications. Behavioral wise we’ve identified lazy and comfort seekers group who relies on technology for smooth life.

Q.: How are you pricing the Product? Explain your thought process.
Ans: The mobile application is free for download from the play store or the app store. The users will be usually charged on the MRP of the product, the users wish to purchase. We charge a delivery of 25 rupees if the order value is below 200 and the delivery is free if it’s above 200. There is no serious logic involved, this is a typical hyperlocal concept where we only charge for the products the user wishes to buy which is the MRP and no hidden costs involved.

Q.: How did you get your first customer?
Ans: We’ve leveraged on AdWords for our first few customers, we’ve had a brilliant campaign set up and started getting responses from the same. Close to 10,000 download happened through the initial campaigns.

Q.: Is there any interesting success story?
Ans:There has been many! We’ve had a brilliant month of February, we’ve run some amazing campaigns on SMS & fetched over 500 orders a day. Which is 2.5 times of our order volume, we were sure that we will not be able to deliver so many orders in a day and had to shut down the order placing option. We stopped taking orders and tried fulfilling the existing orders in the same day, it was an overwhelming day and response was just amazing.

Q.: What is the big picture of your startup?
Ans: Plans to bag 1500X orders than the current order volume per day

• Increase customer base & Market Acquisition across categories we cater
• Rank high on customer success index
• Expanding to 4 cities in India

Q.: What is the insight that you have about this market, which no one else has? Uniqueness about your Startup.
Ans: Our yearlong market research helped us to understand the business models of various successful & failed models and evolved as the most efficient start up amongst the competition and still continuously growing to be the better version. Everywhere we have seen operational difficulties & challenges and curbed them, our system architecture is unique and data is our biggest advantage. We have a ton of data that is for the best usage of users and helps them to pick the products they need easily.

Q.: List all the names of the core Team Members, along with their Designated Roles.
Ans: Sure.

• Subhakar. P, 25, CEO is a Mechanical grad from GITAM University, who conceptualized this idea and brought it alive.
• Mr. Ravi. V, 25, Chief Back End Developer is a NIT Rourkela grad, who does magic with the product & builds awesomeness.
• Mr. Krishna Bhargav. D, 23, Head of Mobile, SRM University, a young tech savvy who manages Android & iOS APP.
• Ms. Tejashri. P, 27, Growth Hacking Manager, Arora Business School, who pours in the revenue and manages the business unit channelizing ways to monetize.
• Mr. Sriteja. D, 23, Marketing Manager, Karunya University, Who manages the Branding, Communications and Marketing unit of the company.

Q.: Who do You Perceive as Your Competition? How do you differentiate yourself with them?
Ans: We do not have a direct competitor as such, our product segments have different competitors, for example in Groceries we have BigBasket, Grofers, etc. and so on! Recently Swiggy stores started the pilot in Gurugram but not fully established yet. The only direct competitor in the organized data is Swiggy Stores and Dunzo in the unorganized data.

Swiggy stores and Dunzo doesn’t have proper data that is required for the users. The FMCG space is very big and players cannot easily get hold of the data that is required to properly showcase the data. We are much organized and signed up with a number of retail player out there who are trying to change the way online shopping is carried out.

Q.: What would be your goal to accomplish in the next six months?
Ans: Plans to bag 1500X orders than the current order volume per day

• Increase customer base & Market Acquisition across categories we cater
• Rank high on customer success index
• Expanding to 4 cities in India

Q.: What message do you want to convey to fellow entrepreneurs?
Ans: Understand the markets deeply even if it is time consuming, else the business turns into a half boiled soup without clear understanding on how real-time markets work. Don’t try to be just better, rather work on how to do it differently.

• Understand what future holds and always be adaptive to the markets or else you’ll be out of the game.
• Always be grounded and start your work with optimism, there might be a lot of competition but believe your idea and keep persevering it in life. Never ever think that you are a small player in the market. You never know who likes what!

Q.: Any other information you would like to share?
Ans: I think “Technology & Trade has a long way to go, e-commerce has disrupted the shopping space but Hyperlocal is the future and Mapprr holds the future.”
———————– Thanks Aruna. Best wishes!