Mahindra Comviva Unveils Zerch – a hyper-local deals discovery platform

Mahindra Comviva has forayed into the mobile D2C space through the launch of Zerch, a mobile first hyper-local deals discovery platform connecting merchants and consumers.

In Bangalore and Delhi-NCR, Zerch has already crossed 150,000 active users and has exclusive offers listed across 2100 stores.

In a relatively short time, Zerch has managed to partner with popular brands such as Burger King, Pizza Hut, Ferns N Petals and Javed Habib hair salon across categories including food & beverages(fine dining/fast food/bakeries), spas and salons, apparel, accessories and more, to provide offers that are exclusively curated for Zerch users.

At present, there are 750 outlets in Bangalore and 1350 in Delhi NCR that offer Zerch-exclusive deals and the number is expected to go beyond 5000 by end of the fiscal year.

Zerch provides a personalized experience where users are notified of offers based on their current location. Further, users are alerted by the app through push notifications about offers when they enter a particular location. Although the communication of offers is at a hyper-local level currently, Zerch plans to take it to a micro-local level to ensure that users enjoy a richer and more fulfilling shopping experience at stores. The company plans to expand its operations in two more cities by the end of the fiscal year. It is currently available to users on Google Play and on the App Store.

Commenting on the overwhelming customer response received post the launch of Zerch, Srinivas Nidugondi, Senior VP and Head of Mobile Financial Solutions, Mahindra Comviva said, “Today consumers are digitally empowered and expect to be served at any time and place of their choice. We believe that businesses need to be where the consumer are. Zerch is created to cater to this need of finding the best deals anywhere, anytime and ensure a superlative user experience leveraging the power of technology to enhance the in-store shopping experience.”

Zerch has a unique proposition for merchants across the spectrum (large chains to SMBs), which do not have right tools for contextual marketing – it aids in connecting offline stores with nearby online/mobile shoppers via discovery of offers and services (standardizing the discovery and fulfilment process) through promotions on online and offline channels. Businesses can leverage Zerch’s user reach to lower marketing spends and increase footfalls to their stores.

In fact, a recently concluded promotional activity with 15 select merchants in Bangalore showed an increase in footfall of around 5-10 % for most stores on a day-to-day basis. As part of the roadmap, the focus is on developing data-driven, contextual promotions ability for merchants based on user behavior and preferences.

Mahindra Comviva is following a phase wise approach for Zerch. The next phase will revolve around the theme of transformation of offline shopping experience which will involve moving on from a hyper local to micro local approach for reaching out to consumers. The plan is to take contextual marketing messaging in stores to the next level by leveraging on the O2O (online to offline) wave of the internet and enabling them to become smart stores. An interesting hardware + software solution is currently being worked upon to turn this vision into reality.