There’s always a genuine worry of online outlets gradually eating up into the meagre existences of the retailers, who already have enough competition among themselves to counter. Then, what if, an idea is equally workable on the online platform and yet is an aide to the customer and the street side retail owner too? Speezo.com, founded by four engineer friends-turned-entrepreneurs based in Hyderabad, promises to be an interesting answer.
The four, Kiran Tallapragada, Nihar Sagar, Manan Agarwal and Nitish Gaddam being 2013 passouts from Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology took a year’s time to sort out their own priorities to come together for Speezo in January this year. “We’d initially conducted test runs in a few areas. We’d made handmade designs and wrote letters, dropping in front of each of the houses, explaining the idea,” Kiran says.
What’s Speezo all about anyways? “It’s a website that’ll help you buy items of your prescribed quantity and quality from your very favourite store. The challenge is the promise we’d manage to do that in an hour to the customer,” Nitish chips in. The idea is about building a crowd-sourcing network for the logistics section alike Uber for their cab service, whenever there’s more demand.
The model works interestingly at their end. “We have a shopper for every area and a person who delivers it too. He/she makes sure that they’re well trained to pick the best of goods available in a store,” he adds.
So, how different can this get from examples like Bigbasket.com or Zip.in, excepting that it helps retailers? Before that thought spruces up your mind, they have an answer ready. “Whenever we want to buy something, there’s a trust factor that plays a crucial role. The fact that we’re binding the customer and the retailer on the same level is the advantage we’re trying to reap,” Nihar elaborates.
More on the uniqueness they bring onto the plate, they have sections called recipes and bundles. The first one lists all the ingredients they need to prepare a dish, whereas bundles offers you choices for specific occasions, ranging from an evening IPL match to a midnight EPL football match.
“For the future, this is a plan to ensure interaction among the users of the site. Each of them can share their own recipes and based on the popularity, they get ranked,” Manan shares.
The other side happens to be the lightweight nature of their website ensuring that a user effortlessly can browse through the items.
This is something, they assure, won’t be limited to groceries. “Once we see promise, we can open up to electronics and heavy items too,” Nihar is hopeful.
