The current Online marketplace is crowded with shopping sites and customer hardly give a damn if the discount in one site is not up to his expectations and product hunt goes on forever. Also customer has no clue if the online seller is a genuine one or they are selling counterfeit items. The only credible source is the review and that’s always (say 99%) in the one to two star zones. In many cases customer has to wait for days and the anxiety builds up over time and ultimately kills the joy of shopping because of inherent delays in delivery and bad customer service.
“These problems made us think what can be done to improve the online shopping experience and make it as fast as possible so that the customer can benefit from faster, trust worthy and reliable services online and the existing system of retail businesses can also get a boost from the emerging e-commerce phenomenon. We also noticed that the stores are providing an equal amount of discount but since they don’t have a platform to showcase the deals, they lose out and eventually miss a potential sale. And this made us think what we could do to make the world a little more simpler by solving these twin issue of reliable and trusted online shopping experience for customer and increased online sale for stores,” says Ashis Mohanty, Co-founder, Nexhop.
With that thought in mind team started working with the brick and mortar stores to bring them online and help them catch up with the growing online market and that’s how
Nexhop was born. The startup was founded by Ashis Mohanty, Surajit Nath and Benny Marianayagam in 2015.
“We are a technology company with focus on stores, their customer base and ease of use. Our complete solution helps stores to connect, engage and retain their online customers. Customers can opt to pick from Stores so that their urgent buying needs can be resolved quickly, eliminating the need for long/uncertain delivery times and ultimately helping stores to increase customer foot fall. Nexhop creates online brand identity for Retail stores that subsequently builds a loyal customer base for the store in the online world.” says Surajit. The customer app (
iOS and
Android) comes with features like Call the retailer, Digital receipt tracking in the cloud, Pick from Store option for the customer convenience and adding stores as favorite to get their best offers.
Nexhop’s Indo-Canadian team consists of 8 core members working full time in two locations Toronto and Bangalore. Ashis, Surajit and Benny have worked together in Toronto before starting Nexhop. Benny holds Master of Engineering in Technology Innovation Management from Carleton University, Canada.
“We got a strong team. Sindhya was a pro iOS Developer and Priyanka was a successful Business Development Manager in their previous roles. Prahlad holds a MBA degree from Symbiosis Pune. Vijaya and Tinto are ace Android developers with many successful apps under their names. Nexhop has also partnered with Vickram College of Engineering in Madurai to offer internship program to final year students to have a consistent inflow of tech talents.” Says Benny.
Company currently has 80+ stores onboard, 6000+ products in inventory, 4000+ customers are using the android and ios apps in three months. The startup is currently bootstrapped and discussions are on with multiple VCs in India to raise its next rounds of funds as well.
“We are currently operating in Bangalore and having a plan to expand to pan India and American region soon. With the Offline Retail segment expected to be a Trillion $ market by 2020, the scope of growth is limitless”, says Ashis.
