Meeting people with a purpose is a great way to solve each other’s problem, grow our network, & find new friends. We live in a world with infinite opportunities, but limited resources. The more we share, the longer we can expect to inhabit this world. Today in this digital world, we are digitally connected, but spatially we are not well connected. There are so many people living around us that searching for the right person is a daunting task. Truple can help you find the right person to engage with.
All you need to do is • SHARE • ENGAGE • PARTICIPATE •a) Share your needs by creating a post
b) People near your location can see you post & the interested ones will connect with you
c) Chat with them & decide if you’d like to engage
Founded by 6 IIT IIM alumni, Truple launched on 10 June 2016 via a website and an Android Application for users all around world. The startup’s founding team include - Jeet Kumar, Karthik CV, Chetan Patil, Sriram Sekhar, Rohit Harlalka and Madhvendra Gupta.
In an exclusive interaction with Sujata Sangwan of BWDisrupt, Truple’s Team shares details about their startup including startup’s present status and future plans
Q1. Tell us about your journey? How did you start truple.org?It’s been close to 2 years since we began our entrepreneurial journey. In these two years we developed 3 products, sadly-closed one, changed the strategy from B2C to B2B for another, and currently working on Truple.
Truple was our envisioned product from day 1 i.e., 2 years back, but we thought of introducing it at a later stage 3-4 years down the line. We started off as a service provider for services like plumbing, electrical, carpentry, yoga, photography etc., but because of huge labour cost there were limitations to expansion. Hence we switched the model to the marketplace model with the name “Getblu.” We were doing fairly well with many happy customers, and then came the Money in truck loads. Just not to us, to our competitors. Investors had put close to $400 Million in the segment, and it became virtually impossible to sustain with few thousand dollars when competitors were burning millions. Also, low user engagement was another limitation in the model.
So in February, 2016, we decided to bring Truple ahead of its time. It took us close to 5 months to get the basic version of the product ready. We launched the beta-version in the last week of June, 2016.
How does your startup work?The platform is easy to use:
1) A user creates a post for his/her requirements
2) The post is viewed by other people on the platform
3) Interested ones connect with the user via chat and comment
4) The user can engage with them and find help for his/her needs.
How is it different from existing ones?The needs that Truple is trying to solve is demand inter-dependency & engagement.
The existing social networking solutions are platforms for self-promotion. On these platforms users are independent but not necessarily inter-dependent; hence they are connected but not engaged.
These needs are therefore untapped.
Existing social networking solutions vs. Truple:• They are used by users for self-promotion; Truple is designed to be used for sharing
• They help people manage connections; Truple helps people manage engagement
• They make people independent; Truple makes people inter-dependent
Truple complements the existing social networking solutions by helping people with their inter-dependent needs while they maintain their independence.
Monetization ModelThe startup monetises by following 3 steps:
Freemium: basic free, advance features paid
Paid Promotions: local businesses & individuals
Ad Revenue: other businesses, app, etc.
Funding StatusWe raised $200K last year in July for Getblu, the marketplace for services. Switched Getblu from B2C to B2B, and started working on Truple in February, 2016. Invested $80K, from the amount raised, in Truple.
Traction detailsAt present Truple has 1200 users with less than a month old beta version with a very positive feedback from the beta community. We have users from The U.S. and Canada (40%), India (33%), Rest-of-world (27%).
Future plans Truple’s future plans include:
Phase I (0-6 Months)Focus on growing user base and stabilizing the platform.
User acquisition through online distribution, organic SEO, and PR
Phase II (6 Months – 2 Years)We’ll focus on increasing user engagement and adding new feature on the platform
User acquisition through digital marketing, paid SEO, paid PR, and offline marketing
Phase III (end of the 2nd Year)We’ll focus on generating revenue and adding geographies
User acquisition through digital marketing, paid SEO, paid PR, and offline marketing
Challenges Ahead· Location based networking is a tough nut to crack. There have been a couple of startups in the past which could not crack the market. However, since then the markets and user behaviour have changed considerably.
· The chicken and egg problem: being location based the platform becomes useful when there are concentrated users on the platform, but user concentration can be achieved once the platform is useful. We’ve a plan to crack this problem & and are exploring community specific promotions, and making subtle changes in the product w/o affecting or deviating from the core offering.
