HYFIE is a social and business payment platform where customers and merchants can exchange goods and services. The users will find some unique social features like destination tracking, group gathering, and live location sharing and tracking and will also find goods and services for their daily requirements. BE’s Anustup Roy Barman talked to Shadab Sultan Mullick, the mind behind this application, regarding its prospects.
Q. How did HYFIE start?
A. In September 2014, I thought of starting an online retail shopping site. But somehow it didn’t work out and HYFIE was initially called off after 10 months. The business model of HYFIE was restructured to a social payment application. I met my friend Manzoor Ali during my visit to Dubai on October 2016 and was convinced to start HYFIE with Manzoor investing 50% of the capital requirement.
Q. How does the app work?
A. The app has been designed in native language and scratch coding. People can find the application on Google Play Store and IOS App Store and download it. After downloading the application, the application is going to ask the user to register on HYFIE. Once the user/merchant is registered, they can use it and view the features and services of this application.
Q. What is the speciality of this app?
A. There are several features, which have been designed in this application based on their own requirements, importance and uniqueness. There is a group gathering feature in this application. There is also a location tracking feature. For merchants/retailers/small businesses this application not only acts as a payment collection application but also as an MIS or business tool.
Q. What were the main difficulties while launching the app?
A. Apart from the initial teething problems, finding a good technical team was the biggest problem for us in Kolkata. Investment was also a major constraint. And finally, the new policy and restriction imposed by the RBI for getting PPI license was also a setback.
Q. Who are your main competitors?
A. Every e-wallet, grocery selling application, social application and billing solution applications in the country can be termed as our competitors but we have restricted our business to Kolkata as of now.
Q. How are you planning to promote the app?
A. We have plans to connect with more people and promote our application. But we want to make sure that a large portion of our capital is not drained in this process. We are looking for digital marketing, road shows, banner postings, etc.
Q. What are your plans of expansion?
A. We are strongly looking for investors in helping us to grow and expand as we not only look to expand in the other Indian cities but are also in other countries like Canada, UAE, USA, Kuwait, South
Africa, Philippines, Kosovo and Turkey.
Q. What is the range of your service?
A. Currently, we are offering services like online grocery, vegetables, fruits, meat, stationary, and laundry payments. We have also included homemade services, auto rickshaw fare payment, group gathering, location tracking, mobile recharge and bill payment, data card-DTH-broad band bill payments and recharge, school fee payment, merchant billing solutions and others.
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