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CustomerGlu

CustomerGlu Helping Companies Give Customers What They Want

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Artificial Intelligence has picked up tremendously over the last few decades, becoming an integral part of the digital world. Several Indian AI start-ups have been able to make a name for themselves in this highly competitive tech space. The market comprises several niches including, retail, computer vision, image processing, and automation. One particular area wherein AI has tremendous scope, which has not fully materialised yet is in improving e-commerce platforms. CustomerGlu is a company hoping to change all that, by revolutionising the way eCommerce businesses run offers that save money while converting more using AI. Here’s a look at what the company does, and how it has quickly grown to become a leader in the space.

Giving Customers Incentives while improving profitability

The company, formerly known as Marax.AI burst into the scene with their SaaS platform named Mars in 2019. The tool was the first of its kind, helping businesses optimise and personalise their discounting budgets. Using Artificial Intelligence, the platform helped companies run the most optimised discount campaigns for their products. It also used a privacy-first model, assisting companies in reaching out to their target audience across niches and devices. The tool nudged customers into completing a transaction or purchase by providing them with the right discount rate based on a budget.

AI-Driven Approach

The Mars tool utilised deep reinforcement learning principles to recommend and allocate the right discount rate for different users. Furthermore, the software allowed companies to improve their overall marketing, purchasing, and discount experience for users. Also, it did all this without intruding or invading user privacy, making it the perfect tool to reach out to larger audiences. The AI engine monitors data points from the user’s cycle, studying their interactions and behaviour. It then gains an understanding of their intent and engages them through a multistep recommendation process – while considering the cost control constraints for the business. The product aims to help e-Commerce companies improve their net revenues while saving money. CustomerGlu does that by allowing companies to do the following:

  1. Personalise offers, discounts and recommendations on categories, brands, and products for individual users.
  2. Reduce the cost of Offers by optimising the offer’s budget and the product’s discount margins.
  3. After initial integration, users have access to a built-in library of Offer UIs for easy application.

The company now uses Microsoft’s Azure platform to run its SaaS platform which enables it to provide customers with the most competitive prices. CustomerGlu received a grant of $120,000 in credits as they are a part of Microsoft for Startups initiative.

Early Steps

The company came to be in 2016, intending to help online businesses solve issues they had related to churn rates. Since then, the company has grown tremendously, aiding the likes of Rapido in optimising their discount experience. The initial team consisted of Prateek Gupta, Raman Shrivastava, and Sumant Subrahamanya. The team has raised their seed round from the likes of Amit Singhal(Former Head of Google Search), SmartStart, and Artesian.VC. The Bangalore-based offer marketing and AI-powered SaaS start-up also has an office in Palo Alto, California. The main mission of the company is to help businesses improve their net revenues while reducing the cost per transaction. By offering users personalised & optimized offers and discounts, the tool helps eCommerce businesses become more profitable.

Funding and Growth

Marax.AI incubated at a start-up accelerator and seed fund named Axilor. Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal, who co-founded Infosys were the brains behind Axilor. The rise in the importance of applied reinforcement learning in marketing to connect analytics with automated actions at the segment of one is what pushed the founders to start something like Mars, which helps companies improve profits on every transaction. The tool solves this problem by contextualizing the offers for higher conversions while reducing the cost per transaction.

Clients and Success

In fact, the use of the Mars tool helped DailyNinja(now acquired by BigBasket) reduce churn by around 17%. CustomerGlu is currently in use by a curated set of early adopters like a preventive healthcare app GOQii(Mumbai) to improve net revenue by 10-30%, and cutting costs by 50-77%. Mumbai-based cosmetics e-commerce company Purplle and Jakarta-based delivery service named Sealog are beginning to use the platform.

Investors and Advisors

The company has also raised funds from Amit Singhal(Former Head of Google Search), SmartStart, and Artesian.VC, and are in talks to raise their next round. They also plan on improving their ML and AI model and want to expand their team to scale their company to broader enterprise markets. The firm also receives support and business advice from PK Gulati, who is the Chairman Emeritus and Founder of the TiE Dubai Chapter and Dr. Srinivas Padmanabhuni, who has a PhD. in AI from the University of Alberta, assists the team in improving the design of their Reinforcement Learning engine.

From Marax.AI to CustomerGlu

The four-year-old start-up recently repackaged their offerings and launched under the name of CustomerGlu in March 2020. Since the company’s primary aim is to help e-commerce players improve net revenues while reducing the cost per transaction, the new name seems to ‘stick’ well.

What’s next for CustomerGlu?

CustomerGlu takes care of both budgetary constraints and retention goals. By striking the right balance between optimizing profitability and making offers contextual, the company has proven to be a massive success. By 2021, experts predict that over 2.5 Trillion transactions will occur through mobile devices bringing in revenue worth more than $3 Trillion. CustomerGlu aims to help businesses improve their margins by 10-30% leading to billions of dollars in profit. It will be interesting to see how the company expands, reaching out to more businesses, and helping them give their customers exactly what they need!

Vocal for Local Campaign

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced several businesses to focus on digital growth and expansion. Many brick-and-mortar stores and retail outlets are now taking their business online, and foraying into the e-commerce industry. The Indian government’s push for “Vocal for Local” encourages the sale of Indian products and brands. Therefore, Indian companies now have an opportunity to pledge their support for local industries and accelerate the initiative of Atmanirbhar Bharat, or Self-reliant India. CustomerGlu can work with such e-commerce companies and help them with improving conversions and boosting their ROIs.

By using a plethora of strategies and campaigns like Cart Discounts, Product discount recommendations, Reward, and Activity UI programs the company helps companies drive their profitability.

Dwolla

Unstoppable Journey of Dwolla towards becoming an E-commerce platform for businesses building the future!

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Sometimes simple ideas give birth to game-changing businesses. Like a leading payment start-up Dwolla, based in Des Moines that is the product of a simple idea. The idea was related to money transfer. Founder thought it should be simple, speedy, and affordable to all, and as a result, they started a platform called Dwolla. Presently, it is the US’ only e-commerce Company, provides mobile payment networks and online payment systems.  It deals with moving money that is affordable yet, simple. Well, we know that dozens of platforms are available for money transfer. But, with the unique idea of Ben Milne and Shane Neuerburg, Dwolla stands out from others. Also, many other businesses chose and succeed with Dwolla as it is customer-centric and its several other features are just great. To take the progress further, recently on 30 March 2020, the firm appointed Brady Harris as a new CEO of the company.

About Founders of Dwolla

Any company is the product of ideas, dedication, and determination of founders. However, the further policies of them build a strong foundation for the company, and help in exploring the business. Dwolla is a perfect example of it. Its foundation is based on Ben Milne and Shane Neuerburg’s idea of moving money in a faster, simpler, and affordable way. In 2008, they set up Dwolla and made the money moving faster, simpler, and affordable than before.

Former CEO and co-founder: Ben Milne

He is the originator and CEO of the company. Under his policies, Dwolla raised a huge investment of approximately 22 million dollars for further exploration of the company. Ben helped to acquire investors like Union Square Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz. Also, under his tenure, Dwolla honored as one of the world’s “50 Most Innovative Companies of 2014” by Fast Company.

As well, Milne honored as one of Forbes’ “Disruptors of the Year”. Additionally, he has appeared on an annual 30 under 30 collections of Inc. Magazine, appeared on The TODAY Show, and Bloomberg TV. For his work, he named in the list, “Innovators Under 35” by MIT Technology Review in 2013.

Shane Neuerburg- CTO and Co-founder

In 2008, he helped in the establishment of Dwolla as well as served as CTO. Apart from that, he is the advisor at Safe Talpa from 2019. Coming to his education, he attended the University of North Dakota for studying computer science. Today the idea of Shane and his co-founder fellow Ben enabled the money transfer with very low transaction costs, faster service, and a feasible approach.  

Brady Harris- Present CEO

He has 20+ years of experience in leadership in the e-commerce sector. Earlier, Harris served at Payscape as a president.

The Backstory of Foundation

In 2008, it is set up and earlier the firm provided local services especially in Lowa. That time, only two employees handled all work of the firm. The actual start of Dwolla is considered in 2010 when it was launched in the US. Earlier, services provided to a few small banks, shops, and retailers. After one year, the firm acquired 20000 users and also, the number of employees increased to 15. Only in the first week afterward, it successfully processed 1 million dollars. 

Significance of Dwolla as an E-commerce platform

It is an e-commerce firm that provides services related to online and mobile payments. Its White label service is constituted of APIs and these are expanded to include instant bank authorizations. In 2011, Dwolla improved its service with Fisync integration and enabled instantaneous transactions which it discontinued in 2017. Also, it has eleven financial firms signed on that provide access to many potential customers (600000 approx).

Lowa based Government authorities use the Dwolla platform as payment methods. In fact, Dwolla is added to the systems of the US Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal for dealing with all kinds of electronics payments.

Controversy

Four years back, in 2016, Dwolla had been accused of inadequate security practices. CFPB charged Dwolla for data security-related issues. As per CFPB, Dwolla didn’t maintain adequate data security practices as mention on the company’s website.

Bottom Line

Despite all odds, Dwolla assisted many small to large businesses to achieve their goals. Also, the firm is known for its unique work method. As a matter of fact, you will never find the Dwolla team in one place. They believed in decentralization, and for that prefer building remote offices at various locations.

As per the idea of founders, the firm is successfully enabled the money transfer with lower transaction costs as compared to Credit card and other payment methods. However, it aims to make the platform more feasible for all kinds of a user in the coming years.

Google

GOOGLE TELLS HOW THE ONLINE BUSINESSES SHOULD RESPONSE IN THIS PANDEMIC

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a worldwide crisis. Apart from the shutdown of offline businesses, educational institutions, etc, it has also successfully created trauma within us. Every nation will find it very hard to economically recover after this deadly virus is eradicated once and for all. While every small enterprise is shutting down temporarily, here is a hope for the online businesses. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, some of the online businesses are also planning to shut down. But, Google says it is a very idea for a business. A website can be less active, but it should still be on the run. Because, once it shuts down permanently, it is very difficult to be back online. Due to the shutdown ranking falls sharply.

The minimalistic approach behind the online business

John Mueller, Google’s senior webmaster trend analyst has given a set of guidelines for those who are planning a shutdown. He said that instead of turning off your business permanently, it is better if you stick to minimal functionalities. This explains what Flipkart and other e-commerce sites are doing. You might show out of stock for the time being or allow your customers to add in wishlist or cart for later. This will save your business once you are back online. Also, you don’t lose you, customers, as they will be visiting the website. Everything except receiving orders should remain active.

Another thing that Muller suggested is to display some important message or notice about the temporary inconvenience. He also said to use Google’s Search Console Tool for re-indexing.

Customers are the first priority

The online sites that are engaged with the service of online ordering and delivery are facing most difficulties. Other websites which provide online solution and the entire procedure is done over the net won’t feel the heat. So, for those e-commerce websites, closing it will be the biggest mistake. You should keep in mind that though your company is not able to deliver, customers visit the website. So, to not have a negative attitude towards your customers, the website should be online. This will help to tackle your problems in a better way once everything is back to normal.

What if you need to shut down?

Shutting down should be the option when you hit rock bottom. If there is no other way then you have to shut down. But, it shouldn’t be more than a few days maximum. If you are shutting down your website you should do thorough research about what are the dos and don’ts. Google also says that the company should display an error page with a 503 HTTP result code. That is the best thing to go for.

And, in case you are planning to shut it down for more than just a few days, here are some tips. One should provide an indexable homepage as a placeholder. This gives the user a way to find it through a search by using 200 HTTP status code. And, if you are planning to hide your website, you can temporarily remove it from search. But, always remember these are very risky. Your business might have a major setback once it is back.

Effects of shutdown

It’s better that your customers know there’s a temporary glitch than not knowing anything at all. This is why a whole vanishing-the-website-idea is not recommended. Always keep your customers updated about the website. There’s not much work in just keeping it active with a notice. And, once you lock the website, users cannot find relevant information about products, services, past orders, reviews, etc. Moreover, if you shut down the website for once, their high chances to lose the contact number and your company’s logo as well.

All these will lead to a company sinking down in the search engine. In other words, Search Control Verification will fail as the company’s information is lost.

The helping hands

It’s hard to make the right decision when you are panicking. So, here’s a small help from domain registrars like GoDaddy and Namecheap. One can continue paying the hosting fee to keep it online. And, these registrars are also helping the small companies survive this. Because entire disabling is very harmful to a company’s future.

Weebly

The Founding Story of Weebly : The Website Hosting and Building Interface

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There have been many cases when people created wondrous things without knowing its worth. Though they want to accomplish a goal, they don’t have the idea that of the impact of their end product. They just keep working to get the product, and at the end, when the product is ready, it transforms their whole lives. One appropriate example of the same is none other than Weebly. Three college students, Dave Rusenko, Chris Fanini, and Dan Veltri, founded Weebly as a college project in 2006, and now, it is one of the most popular website building platforms.

Rusenko and Fanini were friends and met Veltri at the Pennsylvania State University. The university required every student to maintain an online profile. So one of Rusensko’s friend, who was a non-computer student, asked him to help her out with building her website for the astronomy class. While he was helping her, he figured out that many people need a website, but don’t have the skill to build one. This incident led him to think of developing a software that would help people, who did not know how to code, build a whole website.

Rusensko wrote the first line of code for the software, Weebly, as his college project, and Fanini and Veltri also joined in. In 2006, they completed a basic product and represented the same in a tech gathering of 1000 people. But for their disappointment, the CEO who was leading the gathering called the software “the worst idea” over the mic. This was heartbreaking for the three, but they kept the belief in their product, as it was a fact that not many people were into coding and ultimately, needed a website.

After the successful release of the invitational beta of the software in January 2006, in six months, they launched the official private-beta of the software. The next year in January, they took the software to Y Combinator’s winter startup program in Silicon Valley, California. Even though they were the last to apply, their idea had the potential that they got the entry. After getting selected in for the program, the three started working full-time on the software. The next year, they included a new editing interface named “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” to the software. They also raised a US$650,000 funding the same year.

Weebly now was a company, and they had to monetise the software. For that, they introduced the Pro accounts for the users, and also, included AdSense to the platform. In 2009, they also added support for editing the HTML and CSS to Weebly software. In 2013, the company hosted the C series funding, which helped them raise another $35 million. Companies, like Sequoia Capital and Tencent Holdings Ltd., also became the investment partner of Weebly. Till the time, the company had joined 80 employees to its work fleet.

In 2016, the company started working to add support for building an eCommerce website to the software, including the support for online payments through PayPal, Stripe or Authorize.net. It also included features to help people promote their brand, like Facebook Ad creator, integrated email marketing, and lead capture, etc. The platform offers support for 15 different languages, including English, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, German, etc.

In 2018, Square acquired Weebly for a massive $365 million in cash and stock.

The website builder provides the users with multiple feature-rich options, such that they can create a multi-function website in minutes. Today, the very platform also provides hosting service where the users can get domain name including .weebly.com, .com, .net, .org, .co, .info, or .us. In the past 12 years, the company has earned over 45 million customers.

In 2007, Weebly was among the 50 Best Websites of 2007 by TIME Magazine. The CEO and co-founder of Weebly, David Rusenko, got a place in the Forbes’ list of “30 Under 30” in 2011.

Michael Aldrich inventor of online shopping

Michael Aldrich : A Connoisseur in the Entrepreneurial World and the Founder of Online Shopping

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In the biggest success stories of start-ups of that, we hear from around the world today would have not come into existence today, if online shopping did not exist. From the prospering online shopping sites, like eBay, Amazon, Flipkart, to the very small newly started e-commerce sites should be grateful of the English entrepreneur who came up with the idea of online transactions. That great innovator is none other than Michael Aldrich, who developed e-commerce from scratch in the late 1970s. With an experience of 28 years in the IT sector, he worked for reputed companies before inventing teleshopping (today known as online shopping).

Early Life

Born into a family living in Hertfordshire, England, on 22nd August 1941, Aldrich did his schooling from Clapham College, London. He was a very bright student and even received a scholarship to study history at the University of Hull in 1959. During his time there, he met Sandy Kay Hutchings and got married to her just before completing his graduation. So, Aldrich already established a family before starting his career.

Many say that getting committed and entering into married life at a very young age can create difficulties and stops you from giving your best. But, in this case, it’s diametrically opposite.

Beginning of Aldrich’s Career

Michael Aldrich inventor of online shopping
Image Source: alchetron.com

Aldrich worked for Honeywell and Burroughs in the sales and marketing department of the company for almost 15 years. After that, he joined Redifon Computers, which was a part of the UK Rediffusion Group of Companies. The Rediffusion Group manufactured televisions as well as computers, but Aldrich worked for the department of computer manufacturing.

This is when the journey of the invention of online shopping (he named it teleshopping) began.

The Story

One day in the year of 1979, UK Rediffusion Group sent a colour television to Aldrich’s office, but he didn’t pay much attention to it, as his main concern revolved around selling computers. This television came with a new service called Prestel, a paid commercial service that would be delivered through a telephone line.

Seeing no interest of Aldrich in that television one of the engineers in his company, Peter Champion, decided to learn more about this new TV, and its new feature. After studying about the TV for a few weeks, he told Aldrich that the television came with an auto-dialer that could hold four telephone numbers. He gave Aldrich the idea of building such a controller for a computer, and then, connecting the television. Aldrich noticed his point, but he didn’t give it much of thought at that time.

After a few days, when Aldrich was complaining about the weekly tour to grocery shops, the idea of Peter hit him hard. This was when he thought of connecting the television to the supermarket itself and get the groceries delivered to home. Without wasting a single second, Aldrich started working on this idea.

After days of research and writing papers, finally, a prototype TV to test this real-time transaction process was connected to one of their computers, and the test was successful. There wasn’t any year of research going on to support this idea of teleshopping, and hence, it seemed like a sudden scientific mutation took place in the communication world.

Once it was developed, Aldrich needed to set up a market and build up demand as the entire world wasn’t aware of how to use this new system.

After Reality Hit Hard

Aldrich found himself in a total mess, as he invented a product, but there wasn’t a market to sell it. So, after the invention, he tried reaching out to people for real feedback and everything was done in sheer privacy as their product wasn’t officially launched.

He went to a conference in New Orleans, kept it low and received positive feedback from the people. Returning back to the UK, the company designed the multi-port controller, built the computer interface software, and finally, launched it on April 1980. The entire world was amused by the idea of shopping from home, but no one was actually able to interpret how it worked. So, Aldrich hosted a press conference, and again, launched the product in July 1980.

Marketing Strategy

After launching the product, the idea was very clear to Aldrich that he would sell this to big corporations so that he could connect the agents, customers and distributors directly to the system without the involvement of a third party. He divided the market into leaders and followers and approached the leaders with this product. This business idea was later known as business to business online shopping (B2B).

The company had almost no competition, so it flourished for the next ten years after its launch.

After the great invention

In 1984 Aldrich became a fellow of the British Computer Society, and a Chartered Fellow in 2004. He was also awarded an honorary degree of Doctorate of Letters by the University of Brighton in 2004. In 1987 he was made a Freeman of the City of London, England. Aldrich became the Chairman of Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in 1989. In 2010, University of Brighton named an award after his name, which is given to the talented students excelling in e-commerce.

Aldrich died on 19th May 2014.

Richard Liu – CEO and Founder of ‘Jingdong’; Journey of a Man from Nowhere to Billions

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Every big journey has a small start. Every success story has n number of hardships and failures and so does the success story of Richard Liu have. The man who rose from multiple failing businesses and everlasting debts to fame and a business worth billions of dollars. His story speaks up that sometimes taking the wrong roads might benefit as they teach important lessons for future life.

Richard Liu (also known as Liu Qiangdong) was born on March 10, 1973, in a family having a business of coal shipping. He had a vast interest in politics, so he got enrolled in the department of sociology, in the People’s University of China. During the same time, he also studied computer programming as he realized that a degree in sociology, won’t ensure him a job.

richard liu
Image Source: Forbes

While in college, he invested his money in a restaurant venture which failed deliberately and left him in debt. He passed his degree in 1996, and after that went on to pursue a degree of Executive M.B.A. from the China Europe International Business School.

After completing his studies, Liu was first employed by a Japanese health product company and served as the Director of computers and business, alongside the logistics supervisor. In early 1988, he realized that it was the right time to step into the business world and in June, he opened a business with the name Jingdong in Zhongguancun High-tech Industrial Park in Beijing. The company focused on selling authorized magneto-optical products. By 2003, his business was blooming and he managed to open 12 stores.

In mid-2003, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) forced Jingdong employees to stay back at home, and this hit the company hard. Liu’s business fell into a great loss (losing more than 8 million Yuan) and forcing Liu to think out of the box. That’s when he met with an idea to take his business online idea took him from nowhere to the entrepreneur he is now.

In 2005, Liu founded JD.com which eventually grew his business. He closed all of the offline stores and built it a full-time e-commerce company. Richard changed the company’s focus from magneto-optical products to a whole variety of products which can be seen on the site itself.

‘JD.com sets the standard for online shopping through its commitment to quality, authenticity, and its vast product offering covering everything from fresh food and apparel to electronics and cosmetics. Its unrivalled nationwide fulfilment network provides standard same- and next-day delivery covering a population of more than 1 billion – a level of service and speed that is unmatched globally,’ the site itself says.

Richard has been involved in some conflicts too, in his personal life. He was arrested in Minnesota for sexual assault but was released a day after as the company stated the acquisitions were false.

JD currently has 15,000 plus employees and is having a net worth of a massive $57.6 billion. Liu himself has a net worth of $6.1 billion (Forbes) with all-time worth being nearly $2.1 billion. In 2017, he was #25 in Richest in Tech and in 2018, was at #30 on China Rich List 2018.

Richard Liu, the CEO and founder of Jingdong, shows us that no matter how many failures you face, it is all about getting back up, learning and fighting again. Real success comes from not giving up. Richard is an inspiration to all.