When you’re 16, there’s a world out there waiting for you. The latest gadget, the coolest hangout in town, the branded pair of jeans: they call out to you. But you’re counting every rupee of pocket money.
Three men in their 20s, who have been there not too long ago, see a business opportunity here. In 2014, Karan Karnik (23), Niranjan Nakhate (23), and Armaan Vananchal ( 25), created an app called Frapp, which they claim is India’s first and largest student benefits platform. Using it, students can access coupons, deals, and discounts from top brands, and snag internships and campus ambassador programmes. Essentially, it’s a one-stop destination for student needs. “It’s not just a platform for offers or internships,” says Mr. Nakhate. “We say Frapp is creating a home page of a student’s life, which revolves around the profile he or she creates. Whatever needs you have, you come here and we make sure they are addressed on one platform. That’s our vision.”
The seed for Frapp was planted on campus. The founders are all BBA graduates from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Sciences, and Mr. Vananchal, a year senior to the others, was working on a business-plan project on student discount set-ups. He got in touch with Mr. Karnik and Mr. Nakhate for the project, and the three began work on a card that would help students get discounts at establishments near their college. Their research showed there was no such platform in India, whereas internationally, it was a well-established concept: big brands like Starbucks or Forever 21 regularly run student discount campaigns. While Mr. Vananchal got an A+ on his project, the team realised a student card was not the optimal solution, and it could easily be duplicated.
College done, the trio went their separate ways. But they stayed in touch and the concept stayed with them. Finally, they quit their jobs and went decided to go for it.
Mumbai was the perfect place to start the venture, given its mix of students and colleges, and of course all the bigger brands are in the city. And, Mr. Nakhate says, “Having been in Mumbai for so many years, we have the advantage of knowing colleges, of being networked here.” They literally began from a basement, one which belonged to Mr. Vananchal’s uncle. They got a few friends to build a basic website for them, with the idea of running it for a few months to see how interested students and brands would be. The website got good early traction, but the process of students having to email to themselves the offers they had received was complicated. Also, the Android revolution had taken hold.“When we were in college,” Mr. Nakhate says, “we had BlackBerrys, and everyone used BBM. But we found students on WhatsApp and various other apps. We thought this was one way to tap the market.” Aside from phones, “there has been a shift in tastes,” Mr. Nakhate observes. “Places that were popular when we were in college may not be so now. Another change I see is that more students are driven to do internships.” And the clinching factor: students are no longer a marginalised community. To brand marketers, students matter: they are early adopters of products, and open to experimentation; and they have time at their disposal; they move fast, are digitally aware, and are becoming brand influencers.
With brands showing interest in working with the student community, and so the three unveiled a basic version of an app. Big brands like McDonald’s and Costa Coffee showed interest. Mr. Nakhate says, “It was easy for us to convince brands of our vision. The best thing is, a campaign for the student community is not looked at like a discount campaign that hurts their brand image.” So Hard Rock Café, a reasonably premium brand, offered a special student burger forFrapp for a few months. That had aspirational value, and drew a lot of student attention. Since then, Frapp has worked with brands ranging from the multinationals — Starbucks, Uber — to smaller local ones and even single-outlet eateries outside colleges. From gymnasiums to ecommerce services and even other apps, Frapp has worked with just about anyone who sees students as an interesting market. And the app has grown and been refined.
Frapp helps brands engage with students in various ways. The startup takes part in events on campuses across Mumbai, allowing brands listed with them to offer student vouchers for their contests, or even hold their own quizzes.
For instance, Frapp picked 10 students who were influencers on social media (judging by their popularity on apps like Instagram), and gave them the opportunity to become ‘ride experience narrators’ at a theme park. The students got an all-expenses-paid visit and narrated their experience on social media. Frapp went on to do many more such campaigns with other brands, “Students love to apply for these,” Mr. Vananchal says. “They’re short-term, and fulfilling. Whether they get paid or not doesn’t matter. The fact that a student gets to associate with a strong brand drives growth on this front.”
Another social-media-centred campaign revolved around the heroes of campus life: those who had been running college canteens for years, like Anna at St. Xavier’s who has been serving ‘amazing food’ for 25 years, or Raju Chinese at HR College. Images of these heroes were morphed onto ‘çool’ avatars. The campaign got over five lakh views, and even elicited responses from alumni of those colleges.
Apart from what Mr. Vananchal calls the ‘fun’ part, the app offers the more ‘serious’ services like helping students build a résumé, and securing internships. The latter are of two kinds: the more conventional one lasts a few months, with various brands; the other is one-day experiences with brands, such as the one with the theme park. Frapp is also helping build tools that assist students in their day-to-day college life, such as an attendance tracker, or slide templates and interesting fonts for presentations.
What’s continuing to work for them is that they were students not too long ago, the kind that organised college festivals, were actively involved on campus and so on. They haven’t had to spend money on research to understand their target audience, or blow up a lot of cash on marketing campaigns; they’ve relied on direct feedback from users in campuses. To stay in touch with the latest trends, Frapp has student representatives on campus. There’s also a ‘wish list’ section, where students write to them telling them what brands they would like offers from, or would like to work with. And every month, it picks students from campuses across the country to be ambassadors for the app. The students are given interactive tasks, asked to help them identify brands relevant to them and convey product information.
Mr. Vananchal says it’s okay to classify students as homogeneous in one sense: most of them like the same brands, or shop at a couple of places online. Still, there’s an obvious difference. “Their needs are not too many or too flamboyant. But their behaviour and habits are different from what we were like in college. I probably owned a small Nokia worth Rs. 3,000. Recently, when we’d go to college festivals, students would come up to us and ask, ‘Why are you not on iOS?’ That was a big shocker.” Take a quick trip around colleges like Narsee Monjee, Mithibai or HR, and you’ll be amazed at how many students own iPhones. “Don’t get me wrong. A student may not have a data pack enabled on his phone, or will not download an app without WiFi because he doesn’t have money for data, but will still carry an iPhone.” Frapp is careful to never communicate an offer to a student in an ‘uncool’ way, says Nakhate. “Students should feel smart, and not cheap, when using an offer. They should be able to say, ‘You know what? I’m the smart guy who can get you a deal!’”
Frapp now has 80,000 users, Mr. Nakhate says. “We are present in a big way in Mumbai, but are seeing a lot of traction in Delhi, Bengaluru and Pune.” Over the past two months, more than 7,000 students have created profiles on Frapp. There are over 170 offers on the platform. And in the past six months, over 2,000 students have secured internships.
There’s more that the founders want to do with the product. Like build specific resource kits for engineering or business management students, and widen the community net. “We’re trying to make it more of an ecosystem and a community where students can learn from each other,” says Mr. Vananchal. The larger vision is to make the product a way of life for students internationally.
Was it easy getting as far as this, especially after giving up promising jobs, seeing their friends make lots more money in full-time jobs? “For one year, we didn’t pay ourselves a salary. But we were clear we were in this for the long run.” Their parents have been supportive, but at the same time, probably believe this is not the ultimate career destination for their children. “When we began,” Mr. Nakhate says, “they used to tell us, ‘Oh, you’re just 21, you can give it a shot.’ Now, they tell us, ‘You’re just 23, you can try it out.’ But we’ve not taken this up as a project we’re doing on the side; we’re serious about solving problems we faced when we were students.”
