With an aim of strengthening its customer engagement and loyalty solution offering, Mumbai-based Hansa Cequity, India’s leading and largest customer marketing company, has acquired inloyal, a division of Forysta Ventures Limited. Through this strategic acquisition, Hansa Cequity aims to cater to a wider market of customer engagement and loyalty programmes using InLoyal’s mobile app-led strategic approach.
This is the second acquisition announcement by Hansa Cequity. The decision is line with its aggressive expansion plans for which the company had raised around $5 million (Rs 30 crore) from private equity firm ASK Pravi in June last year.
InLoyal was founded in mid-2014 by entrepreneur-couple Kunal Mehta and Urvi Mehta. InLoyal is a mobile loyalty wallet and SaaS loyalty platform, where InLoyal can create loyalty programmes for retail merchants and have them engaged with their customers through the wallet. Programmes for merchants like Oberoi Mall, Infiniti Mall, Lulu Mall and more are being serviced by InLoyal. Till date, the company has processed loyalty sales of Rs 185 crore, issued 18.7 million points of which 8.5 million have been redeemed. InLoyal aims to disrupt the loyalty programme market with its unique mobile loyalty wallet offering that has been designed to help one carry and manage all loyalty cards in the virtual pocket of a consumer.
On the acquisition, S Swaminathan, CEO and Co-Founder, Hansa Cequity said, “As the mobile mind shift speeds up, consumers’ expectations will soar, pressuring brands to better utilise contextual data. More companies will treat mobile as core to the whole customer experience — not just as a channel. We see Inloyal as a strategic offering that leverages contextual data to drive improved loyalty for brands. With this acquisition, we aim to make loyalty a fun and engaging experience for the retailer and customers alike.”
Kunal Mehta, Co-Founder, InLoyal said, “We were looking to raise funds from strategic investors to further fuel the growth and development for inloyal, both as a wallet and platform. After a couple of meetings with Hansa Cequity, we realised that we had a lot of common goals and saw a definite synergy between our companies. We felt it was a natural progression for inloyal as we would benefit from Hansa Cequity’s rich profile and expertise in the field of loyalty and Hansa Cequity would get a customer-facing interface to venture into the mobile loyalty wallet and rewards marketplace territory. The idea is to expedite InLoyal’s penetration in the market given that the current practices in loyalty are not very different from a decade back. It is waiting to be disrupted.”
Ajay Kelkar, COO and Co-Founder, Hansa Cequity added, “Mobile is fast becoming the primary channel in which customers interact and engage. Multiple studies now show that consumers unlock their phones to interact with brands more than 100 times per day. Brands need to take advantage of this and create real time engagement that powers digital loyalty programmes. With our vision to expand our business offerings, we aim to cater to a wider market with Inloyal's mobile-led strategic approach and hope that this will be a rewarding journey for all of us."
Hansa Cequity recently acquired a majority stake in Bengaluru-based data science and analytics company, D-Square Solutions Private Limited for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition was aimed to strengthen its data science expertise and help in building strong capabilities in cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in addition to enhancing its analytics-driven marketing offerings.
