Dear friends and associates:

In the recent past, consumer businesses worldwide have discovered the phenomenon of group buying. One deeply discounted deal on a product or service is made available to local consumers; if enough people buy within a set deadline, everyone gets the deal, else the deal is off. Just like one-click shopping and the social web, we believe that group buying is a great feature that many digital commerce businesses should incorporate in their platforms over the next few years. Chaupaati has taken a step in that direction by partnering with Brown Paper Bag to launch ThePotluck.in starting with Mumbai. To start, we will announce one cool deal in the lifestyle category every weekend targeted towards the hip & trendy Mumbai socialites. The launch deal on Friday, May 21 was FREE couple entry at Prive Colaba, one of the hardest clubs to get into in Mumbai. The deal closed at midnight on Sunday, May 23 with 43 coupons sold!

We would love to get your thoughts, opinions and feedback about this business; and products or services that can be offered at 50-80% off in return for an advance payment towards a minimum commitment. The current reach of ThePotluck.in is tens of thousands of elite professionals and business families in Mumbai, and growing virally every day. The idea is to catch the attention and grab the loyalty of these consumers with imaginative deals rather than use discounting to reach a different consumer set. If you would like to partner with us, get featured, advice us or participate in any other way, we would immensely value your patronage.

Enjoy ThePotluck.in - The weekend’s here, big deal!

Chaupaati team

At Chaupaati, we have always wondered how the pervasiveness of the mobile phone can be used to provide market access to consumers at large. In the early 90’s, AOL made the Internet pervasive in American households and Netscape changed the way these consumers accessed information over this new medium. In the late 90’s, several American companies disrupted traditional brick-and-mortar consumption models by providing direct market access to these consumers in this brave new world. In the late 00’s, the mobile phone has penetrated Indian households and we are in times where businesses are figuring out how this impacts the way people access and buy consumer goods and services. Here are some initial learnings.

Phone is not Internet

A phone is meant to access people. The Internet is meant to access information. One may be used as a proxy to the other, but it is important to understand the difference in consumer expectation to enable that proxy. While the phone can be a medium to interact with a digital platform that is always accessible wherever you are, it is different from the Internet. Using the Awareness-Intent-Desire-Action model of consumer behavior leading to a purchase decision, let us contrast how the two media compare. Both phone and Internet are interactive media and best used for Awareness creation on pull rather than by push. The Internet is great for high-involvement information browsing and okay at visualizing, making it a good medium to convert Awareness to Intent to Desire. The phone is pathetic for this purpose. The phone is great at providing comfort from human interaction and clarifying nagging doubts at the moment of truth, making it a good medium to convert Desire to Action. The Internet falls short here.

There is a Unique Reason

Popular myths: (a) If it sells in the store, it will sell on the phone. (b) If it sells on the Internet, it will sell on the phone. These are both dangerously wrong inferences. Wrong because there are several counter examples. Dangerous because they are half-true. A new medium must offer a unique benefit for people to break away from current habit. This benefit must be compelling enough to drive the change in behavior. Multiple successful behavior changes will eventually drive a habit change. Every order by phone is triggered by one or more of these benefits: not near Internet, special order requests, need clarification, not available at my stores, don’t know where to buy, it’s a secret, want to negotiate, want convenience, have deadline, want home delivery, getting a great deal, etc. It will become a habit only after multiple orders. Before that happens, transactions will not happen just because people want to buy.

Medium - Product - Consumer

Popular myths: (1) Television and print are the best ways to advertise products meant for ordering by phone. (2) Gifts and durables are the killer categories for phone commerce. (3) Businessmen in tier 2 urban areas are most likely to buy over the phone. In each case, the incorrect conclusion is that a medium, or a product, or a consumer is best suited for phone commerce. In reality, it is correct to draw conclusions only on the combination of media, product and consumer. Media bias: Housewives will purchase jewelery as seen on TV, but not as seen in a newspaper. Product bias: Parents will purchase children’s comics they browsed online, but not textbooks. Consumer bias: Nagpur shopkeepers will purchase dual-sim mobiles advertised on hoardings, but Mumbai shopkeepers would not. It is the combination that works or does not work.

It’s a Platform, not a Call Center

Just as an Internet business is not just a website, a phone business is not just a call center. Anyone can set up a call center, just as anyone can set up a website. But outsourcing a call center or website design capability is a different business from offering a platform that enables a new consumer service. What defines an Internet or phone business is the product or service it offers, the experience it provides its customers, and the way it fulfills its promise to the customer. Websites and call centers with a strong catalog, good usability and impeccable fulfillment are more than just websites and call centers. Business success relies on understanding the customer need and building an entire organization, product platform and fulfillment network to fulfill that need.

Chaupaati’s mission is to aggregate the commerce between consumers, unorganized businesses and brands in India, and make it easily accessible. We are doing this by working with leading Indian consumer brands and retailers to build out a direct-to-consumer channel in books & magazines, home appliances, computers, mobiles, education, gifts, automobiles, retail, FMCG, consumer services and other verticals we have not discovered yet. If you know of someone who shares our vision, please let me know at kashyap@chaupaati.in. In the meanwhile, enjoy phone pe deal at 922-222-1947.

Chaupaati is now the all-India phone shop for consumer durable products of Videocon brands. Besides home electronics and appliances offered under brand Videocon, this includes small home appliances by Kenstar, living room products by Sansui and Akai, and home appliances by Kelvinator and Electrolux. You can now conveniently order any of these products by calling 922-222-1947 or going to chaupaati.in, and get it shipped to your doorstep anywhere in India within 7-10 days. With this alliance, Chaupaati and Videocon hope to bring affordable electronics directly to your home, saving you the hassle of long queues, carrying bulky items, or going from shop to shop to find the right product and the right deal. Finding the product for your budget and needs is now just a phone call away.

Videocon Group is a $2.5 billion global conglomerate, and is one of India’s largest manufacturers and suppliers of consumer electronics, home appliances and power products. Videocon’s extensive network of distribution and logistics ensures delivery in all major Indian cities with direct warranty from the manufacturer. Since the product is directly sourced from the company, customers get great discounts for the products of their choice. The customer support and after sales service of Videocon is offered for all products purchased through Chaupaati.

The products on offer through Chaupaati include entertainment products like LCD TV’s, Color TV’s, DVD players, audio systems & home theater systems; home appliances like air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, inverters and geysers; and kitchen appliances like microwave ovens, mixer grinders, multi processors, rice cookers, toasters, irons.

Chaupaati’s mission is to aggregate commerce between consumers and businesses in India and make it easily accessible. Chaupaati is a phone commerce company that helps Indian businesses and consumers buy and sell products by phone. Chaupaati helps leading consumer brands build a pan-India direct-to-consumer phone commerce channel using its flagship service Response Process Outsourcing.

With this partnership, Chaupaati and Videocon hope to make a range of durables easily accessible to consumers all over India, through the convenience of the phone. Call 922-222-1947 anywhere in India to find the products and deals that are right for you.

August 2009: Laxmikant Vyas, Gaurav Chopra, Mini Paul, Rohit Kumar - students of Indian School of Business 2010 performed a study of Chaupaati Bazaar as part of their final project of the core course in Entrepreneurship. The mandate for the report was to identify an individual who has been involved in starting or growing a venture, identify the challenges or hurdles faced by this individual through his/her journey and the course of action adopted, analyze these actions and their impacts and conclude with any valuable insights gained.

In order to analyze the sustainability of Chaupaati’s business model, they studied a similar venture started by Abhay Singhal, an IIT Kanpur graduate. Abhay was one of the first to realize the potential of phone classifieds and had started his venture in Bombay in 2005 backed by $500,000 in VC funds. They analyzed the reasons why the SMS based phone classified service did not take off as expected and contrasted it with Chaupaati’s business model that overcomes these problems.

The report says that Chaupaati’s key strengths are the business model, affordability by small businessmen, focused top management, and quality of customer experience. The report identifies Chaupaati’s future opportunities in expanding from a phone classifieds to a phone commerce platform, and expanding geographical scope from Mumbai to rest of India; and cites Chaupaati’s agility to adapt to market conditions and change as the biggest factor that makes it eligible to address this opportunity.

Chaupaati was particularly impressed with the “Learning and Reflection” section in which the report draws parallels between Chaupaati’s real world approach and business theories learned in the classroom; in the areas of evaluating and developing the opportunity, securing resources, and growing and sustaining the enterprise.

Thanks Laxmikant and team, for a brilliantly written report and your insightful coverage. And thanks for letting us share it with the world beyond your colleagues and faculty at ISB. Best of luck from the Chaupaati team!

Late Lateef is not your friend’s granduncle who passed away last summer. It is you, who means well, yet forgets to send gifts to your loved ones in a timely manner. You call them and promise to do better the next time, but sometimes there is no next time. Chaupaati has now made it convenient for you to send a gift to your friends and family anywhere in India, from a selection of your favorite brands.

Ferns N Petals is a premium gifting service that offers exclusive gifts for all occasions, and never fails to deliver on its promise. We tried them first and loved how hard they work to bring a smile on the faces of your loved ones. We could not find an address in India where they did not deliver, and their express delivery reaches most major towns of India within the same day (for orders before 2p)! You can browse the FnP catalog by calling Chaupaati on 922-222-1947 or clicking on FnP gifts, and then complete your order online or by phone to ship the gift with a personal note.

Similarly, a range of products like comics by Amar Chitra Katha & Tinkle, sweets by Bikanervala, T-shirts by Toube Bas, Natural products by Adya and more may be gifted through Chaupaati with just a few minutes on the phone or online. Did we make it easier for you procrastinators to send gifts last minute, or harder for you to have an excuse the next time you default?

Tell us what else you would like to see in the catalog.

Chaupaati - phone pe deal

922-222-1947

You are a small business. You have a neat product line up. You probably have a retail showroom. But you also have tie-ups with logistics partners who can deliver your products anywhere in India.

Does your business have an online store where customers can buy your products? Importantly, does your business have a phone store where your customers can call to order and pay?

Chaupaati enables small and medium scale businesses to create a phone + web store in less than 15 minutes. Just log on to www.chaupaati.in/post and create ads of your products (remember to select the ‘I want to sell’ option). Your customers can discover your products by logging on to www.chaupaati.in or by calling 922-222-1947. Once they select the product, they can pay using credit card, debit card or net-banking on web and using a credit card on phone.

On successful completion of order, we’ll send you order and delivery details in real-time. Just ship the order to your customer and settle collections with Chaupaati at the end of month.

Adya International, Bikanervala Sweets and Toube Bas are some of the small and entrepreneurial businesses who’ve set-up their phone stores on Chaupaati. We hope many more businesses will find value with our system.

At Chaupaati, we built a platform to allow consumers at large and unorganized businesses to offer local deals over the phone. We received a great response for buying and selling of a variety of household durables and household services. Over 7,000 advertisers have now used Chaupaati to advertise their products and services, and connected with over 50,000 consumers within their locality. Now consumer brands and corporations have started using Chaupaati as a medium to reach out to consumers with their deals and offers as well.

The complete catalog of Amar Chitra Katha, Tinkle, Karadi Tales, etc. for comics, books, games, audio and video content is now available on Chaupaati to parents and youth across India. Amar Chitra Katha was an introduction to Indian culture for a lot of us when we were kids, while the stories of Suppandi, Shikari Shambhu and Kalia entertained our families all ages alike. It is gratifying to bring the same joy to the ACK fan base across India on a daily basis.

Yatra.com, a leading travel company, is offering phenomenal fly and stay packages to Goa and hotel packages for Lonavala, Matheran, Shirdi and Goa through Chaupaati. You’ve got to love the recession when hotels and flights are available at roughly half the rates of a few months ago. It’s probably a good time to take a break from the stress of a slow economy anyway, and discover the prettier side of the monsoons. We hope that this is the beginning of many more travel deals and last-minute packages on Chaupaati.

BigFlix.com, a leading video rental company, is offering exclusive BigFlix plans for Chaupaati users. If you could watch all episodes of classic series such as Ye Jo Hai Zindagi, The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, Flop Show, Umar Shareif plays within a month for Rs.300, with the convenience of getting it all delivered and picked up one by one at your doorstep, would you take it? We will find out this month. Unlimited disc plans are available at upto 10% off MRP.

Chaupaati strives to bring you the best deals, no matter where they come from. Big brands, small businesses, people like you & me, or anyone who likes to see that smile on your face. We promise many more coming soon. In the meantime, enjoy your phone pe deal…

Mohammad Rafiq is the sole bread winner of a family of five: his wife, 3 kids and him. “I started my little shop in 2008. I am in a limited area in the middle of 1,000-2,000 jhopdas (huts). Before Chaupaati, I sold 2-5 computers in the neighbourhood”. Besides selling assembled computers to slumdwellers and low-income customers, Rafiq also trades computer parts, offers repair services and computer education & training to youngsters in his slum. Before meeting Chaupaati, he did not get customers from outside the slum.

“God had his way and someone from Chaupaati visited me here and told me that he would get me new business through SMS. His words immediately stuck in my head.” Rafiq bought the cheapest available trial plan from Chaupaati and got 20 contacts within a period of a week. Out of these, a couple of youngsters from Virar (30 km north of Andheri) found Rafiq’s deal too good to be true and showed up at his shop. They took home two computers, on which Rafiq made a profit of Rs.500 each. After a week, he sold another at Rs.700 profit. He had now made more than 3x return on his investment in Chaupaati. Then he bought the monthly plan and closed 4 more deals: “Mira Road, Sion, Kandivali East and Kandivali West”. He is now a subscriber for our yearly plan, whose plan value is 50 times the value of his original trial plan; and with this, Rafiq expects to do 100x more business within the year!

“Dial Karo tried to sell me a plan for a much cheaper price than Chaupaati and said they would start my service within 3 days”, says Rafiq, “but now I am familiar with Chaupaati and I like that they always started sending me contacts from the very first day. I am satisfied with Chaupaati and I trust them.” He has no reason to try another service when Chaupaati is exceeding his service capacity faster than he can scale it. Rafiq succintly concludes “For me, it’s all about fresh sms, fresh call, fresh deal“.

Customers like Mohammad Rafiq help us fulfill our dream of empowering the small entrepreneur and give him a level field to compete with bigger businesses on the basis of his merit.

Chaupaati went live in Jun 2008, and since then tens of thousands of users have called us to buy and sell their stuff. In Jan 2009, we started publishing the Chaupaati deals online.

The Chaupaati team is happy to announce that you can now post your deals to Chaupaati online. We make sure that your deal is advertised not just through web but also through offline media like newspapers, television, outdoors, SMS and voice; so that you can get responses conveniently on your mobile.

The team’s also working to bring you a search and filter interface to better surf through the deals, adding more payment options, and other features our customers have requested - and we appreciate your patience while we do this. As always, we value your feedback a lot and are eager to hear from our customers. Let us know what you think!

Chaupaati team is happy to announce that the deals are now available online for browsing. If you like something you see, call 922-222-1947, mention the deal you like and receive sellers’ contact directly by SMS. We are working hard to bring you a search and browse interface to better surf through the deals and directly contact sellers without calling us. Thanks for waiting!

As always, we value your feedback a lot. Do give us a shout if you have suggestions, cribs, praise or anything else to say.