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eWards present management services for businesses. Their technologically enabled offerings are especially viable for small and medium scale businesses. BE’s Saptarshi Deb spoke to Abhishek Mimani, Founder, eWards.
Q) What market segment do you wish to leverage through your start-up?

A) In this world of big corporations, small and medium businesses globally stand at a big disadvantage due to a lack of resources, especially when it comes to finance and manpower. Today's technological advancement has begun the process of leveling this playground. While products that help in automation have alleviated the need to reduce the number of skilled manpower needed, artificial intelligence has helped TO reduce the quality of manpower needed. Adding to this process, start-ups are making such products available to small and medium enterprises at a very affordable cost.
This is the role eWards plays for small and medium enterprises where we not only help in providing such technology but also help in the implementation of the same. Our current focus is the F&B and brick and mortar retail business, but we also plan to expand into other sectors.

Q) Would you say that your entrepreneurship, as a marketing idea, developed with the experiences gained from the pandemic?

A) While we have been operating for the last five years, we believe the pandemic has had two major impacts on businesses like ours. We have seen the pace at which the adoption of technology has taken off has exponentially increased. This adoption is not only limited to small businesses but also to the customers they serve. A lot of new learnings happened because of the pandemic, which helped in product development as well as the way we run our business.
 
Q) What are the services that are being provided by your team?

A) We are a SaaS company which helps businesses in three aspects. One of the most important components of running a successful business is to market and communicate your business values to your current and potential customers. At eWards, we provide them with a technology solution for marketing, which allows them to maintain their customer historical, demographic as well as preferences data in one place, based on which they are able to communicate the right message at the right time of their life cycle stage with the brand using the communication channel which is appropriate for them. This helps our customers reduce their marketing costs while increasing revenue by ensuring they have the best chance to be able to communicate their message to their current or potential customers. As this process is automated and linked to their billing system, it ensures that the business owner does not need a specialist or spend much of his time on his marketing needs.

During the pandemic, the world of online commerce has catapulted and the trajectory of the growth of online business does not seem to be lessening. It is imperative for all businesses to be present online, ensuring the reach for their products, not limited to the location where they are present. At eWards, we are one of the few start-ups in the country that provide a complete off-the-shelf e-commerce platform across websites and apps which are already plugged in with advanced CRM, logistic and payment partners, inventory modules and marketing tools. One can operate not only an e-commerce module but also a rewards module and a digital catalogue using our platform. Now one can operate online in a matter of two weeks, and we ensure the platform automatically scales up to manage the success of our customers.

Social media as a channel can be used to scale business, but it can also be a source for businesses to shut shop. One bad experience can lead to a bad tweet or an ugly post which can snowball into a massive headache for the business. Therefore, we see lots of growing businesses using a feedback module too. It not only improves their product and service quality but also provides their clients with a platform to vent their anger. These close loop systems allow matters to be automatically scaled up and issues to be mapped against the exact cause, which allows redressal. At eWards, our feedback module called Loop ensures clients a varied way of collecting such feedback in an automated manner with an option to use multiple channels, be it physical or electronic. The system automatically categorises issues and scales them upwards to the right person in the organisation for a quick resolution.

Q) Presently, you are focusing on small businesses. Do you plan to scale up your operations to service bigger businesses in the near future?

A) In our organisation, DNA has always been one of innovation. We are known in the industry for our unique offerings, which are backed by some outstanding servicing. Currently, we are working on a few patentable technologically innovative ideas which we believe can help us revolutionise the way loyalty programmes are being run by large corporations. If we are successful in the same, you will soon see our system being used by some of the larger corporations.

Q) Are your operations limited to eastern India? Looking forward, would you like to expand further?

A) While we are based out of eastern India, we run pan-India operations. We have sold our system across 55 cities in India. Going forward, we would like to expand internationally. At the same time, we would also like to expand the number of sectors that we cover today.