16

Varsha Singh

Every time you go shopping or to cafes and restaurants, you are more likely than not to be approached to make a payback card. For a fast moving consumer, this can be a wallet bursting exercise.

Loyalie, a new application that features a digital loyalty card, can be a winner in this case. Customers can carry this in their smartphones. Loyalie operates on a concept, which is impressive for its novelty and innovativeness. It serves as a medium for businesses to connect to their top clients. The app is currently available in Bangalore and Kolkata and has about 200 clients in sectors including F&B, retail, spas and wellness, automobiles, entertainment, etc.

Loyalie is the brainchild of Akhil Saraf, who is its CEO. He ditched his tax consultancy career to start this innovative venture.  Explaining the reason behind his venture, he told BE, “I couldn’t go to my regular cafe for a month and then when I went back there, the entire staff had changed. I was no longer part of the group of people who’d get priority service and there was no recognition for me in the same place where I had spent so much time! Along with my CA articleship, I used to invest in the equity markets. I had a very commendable portfolio size which I built from scratch. At 22, I had nothing to lose if I invested it all in solving a problem I truly believe exists. So I took the plunge and went ahead with it.”

Loyalie is meant for both masses and classes who would be delighted to have their loyalty to their favourite places recognised and have access to an assortment of rewards. This reward has brought back the stamp system of loyalty where people who go back to the same place again and again would be rewarded. These incentives are designed to appreciate the value that a loyal customer brings to an organization. “At a cafe, if you go there for the coffee, you might get products like a free brownie for coming in the 2nd time, a starter after the 4th visit and then finally your much beloved coffee after the 6th visit. This entices customers as they now feel valued by the businesses and is our differentiating factor from all other programmes out in the market,” Saraf added.

The major clients of Loyalie are Harley Davidson, Supreme Motors – Mahindra, Vespa, Happily Unmarried, Iosis Wellness, Aqua Java, and several others. The app has a method of loyalty programmers’ by allowing users to
store their cards in the App and removing the clutter out of their wallet. Another feature is the dedicated ‘Sales’ page, which targets the physical retailers to compete with online retailer by arming them with the power of information. “The challenge we faced is the fact that we were bringing in a market where we had to educate the customers and our clients about a new kind of loyalty which never existed in India,” shared Saraf. Talking about the pricing strategy he said “We have the app free for consumers. We charge the merchants a nominal fee on an annual basis. He also discussed about his future plans and said, “A year from now, I see us being pan Indian in terms reaching all the metros and Tier-1 cities. It’s a hard journey to get there but one that has to be done.”