OnsiteGo - Offers Damage Protection and Extended Warranty Services for Digital Products & Home Appliances
OnsiteGo, is an independent provider of after sales service for digital products and home appliances founded by IIM-B alumnus Kunal Mahipal in 2010. The company is headquartered in Mumbai.
Kunal’s personal experience of receiving sub-par repair service for mobiles and gadgets in India led him to recognize unmet need for hassle-free and reliable post-purchase services. The hassles that he had to go through just to get a device dropped and collected from an authorized service centre led Kunal to recognize the need for nuisance-free and reliable post-purchase services. He started OnsiteGo as a help for pick and drop services for repairing mobile devices and laptops. The philosophy was simple – to provide a hassle-free service to the customer for repairing his device and thus improving their post-purchase ownership experience.
Unique Key Services/Delivery model
OnsiteGo Extended Warranty is the company’s flagship product. The plan ensures that Customers are able to maintain their electronic products in top condition even in years 2, 3 & 4 of the life of the product – long after the manufacturer’s warranty has expired.
Customers can buy the OnsiteGo Extended Warranty plans from its website, or from any of the preferred partners like Croma, Amazon.in, Flipkart or Snapdeal. OnsiteGo Extended Warranty is also available with hundreds of its single and multi-store partners across India.
Apart from Extended Warranty, OnsiteGo also has a couple of Damage Protection services for mobile phones, tablets and laptops. Manufacturer’s warranty covers all routine problems occurring in the phone for the first 12 months of ownership of the phone. It does not cover any physical or liquid damage to the phone.
The startup Spills and Drops Protection program is its flagship damage protection program. Spills and Drops Protection program is designed to ensure that any damage to your phone in the first 12 months of ownership of the phone is taken care of by the company. The damaged phone is picked, serviced and delivered. At no extra charge to the Customer.
The company also offers OnsiteGo Screen Protection program. The Screen Protection program covers damage to the screen of the phone. With advancements in mobile technology, the dependency on and the replacement cost of touch screen has increased drastically. Any kind of damage to the screen can make life miserable. This program ensures that Customers are able to get protection for the part of the phone that is the most fragile and has the highest propensity of breaking; at a lesser cost – while retaining the five-star Customer service experience that OnsiteGo seeks to provide.
OnsiteGo’s service delivery model is not very complex. The company partner with brand authorized service centers for service delivery. This ensures that products under the warranty and damage protection programs are repaired by the technicians who are best equipped to handle them. Brand authorized service centers source parts directly from the brand and this ensures that genuine in 100% of the cases. This also allows them to extend our service is almost every pin code in India.
Differentiation
Some warranty and damage protection companies in the industry rely upon fine print and terms and conditions to reduce pay outs to Customers. Most of these terms are unfair and service requests are rejected on technicalities. OnsiteGo, however, have a completely contrarian approach. Company’s terms and conditions are extremely lucid and easy to understand with minimal fine print. They do not impose any onerous requirements on their customers such as filling a bunch of documents. They do not make their customers jump through hoops to register their service requests.
At OnsiteGo, they take their Customers’Trust very seriously. The fact that company doesn’t have a trust deficit with its Customer – they trust them and company in turn also trust them – is a key differentiator for OnsiteGo. Kunal believes it is the key to company’s long term success and it is what will make them India’s best Customer Service brand.
Team
OnsiteGo team is the most important part of any Company. Kunal took great care to ensure that folks who came in as part of the core team had a strong passion to create a world class Customer Service company. The most important trait he always looked for was the desire to deliver best in class Customer Service. The fact that they were in a large market solving a fairly obvious need made it easy for the team to be aligned to the idea itself.
Today the team is a fantastic blend of people who care, very deeply, about the Customer Experience. Right from folks who work in the call center, to folks who manage service operations for OnsiteGo – everyone at OnsiteGo has a common trait. The desire to deliver a fantastic Customer Experience.
The DNA of the Company has always been to deliver best in class service. And so the company evolved as the best service provider in the category. Simply because, the core team is extremely passionate about Customer Service.
Core team at OnsiteGo is a group of dynamic leaders, passionate about their job. This includes…
Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Kunal aspires to make OnsiteGo India’s most recognized and valuable service brand.
Sushant is Chief Product Officer (CPO). He is responsible for designing delightful customer experiences. An alumnus of IIM, Ahmedabad, Sushant is also a co-founder at PolicyBazaar.com.
Sunil is Chief Operations Officer (COO). He heads Operations, and is responsible for ensuring that OnsiteGo’s customers always stay delighted with its service. Sunil is an alumnus of IIT, Bombay & IIM, Calcutta.
Rahul is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and the brain child behind the scalable and robust technology for a delightful customer experience and risk management. Rahul is an alumnus of IIT, Kanpur.
· Sanjeev Singh
Sanjeev is the Service Innovations Head and is responsible for ensuring that the repair quality and experience that OnsiteGo provides remains the best in class. Sanjeev headed service at Nokia and Samsung in his previous stints.
Revenue/Funding
In the first year, the company had few hundred customers in Mumbai. Today, OnsiteGo has over 3 million customers in almost every pin code in India who have bought the services. OnsiteGo works with the largest online and offline retailers in India. OnsiteGo’s partners include Amazon, Flipkart, Croma, Vijay Sales and Snapdeal. The company works with the best service centers in India who are extremely committed to delivering best in class service.
The one thing that sets them apart from their competition is that they are not playing the same game as all of them. Their competitors classify themselves as accidental damage protection companies or extended warranty companies. But OnsiteGo claims that it is neither an accidental damage company or nor an extended warranty company. It’s a Customer Service company. At OnsiteGo the team is insanely focused on the Customer and the experience they provide. That focus is reflected in their product design – OnsiteGo is the only extended warranty and damage protection company that does not have fine print for the Customer. They don’t have a list of terms and conditions that they want the Customer to read and adhere to. At OnsiteGo, they trust their Customers. Internally, they call it zero trust deficit. Company’s distribution strategy, product strategy, service strategy, everything that is core the business is influenced by this faith.
The startup is a cash positive Company. It generates more cash than it spends every month. They are one of the few startups that is funded by Customers. In this space, OnsiteGo is the capital efficient Company. Their capital raised/topline ratio is the least in the industry – and they intend to keep it that way! Accel Partners, investors in Facebook and Flipkart, is an investor in OnsiteGo.
Future plans
The company wants to help Customers buy, own and resell electronic product. Right now, the focus is on 2 areas. OnsiteGo wants to help more and more people in their ownership experience – To that end the company is expanding the extended warranty and damage protection business and taking it to more and more Customers.
Company has lots of information on performance of various products and Kunal believes that Customers can use this information while making purchase decisions. The next step will be to provide Customers with inputs which can influence their purchase decisions.
