Connecting the dots for consumers
CHENNAI: At an age when teenagers are exploring their newfound freedom, Jeevan Chowdary found his calling without even realising it. In the first year of engineering, Jeevan made a choice for his life that most might not. He now flaunts his recently-received 25 under 25 award behind his desk at his swanky office in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad. The journey was not easy for the 23-year-old. Moulding himself and his company according to experience and gaps in the market, he runs a successful engagement marketing company for local businesses called Froogal.
“We realised that businesses both online and offline, big and small had only one pain point — they wanted revenues. And we figured that the biggest way to ensure that is to make customers come back to the establishment for more. That could be done with loyalty programmes but there were a lot of those in the market already. So, we began customising them for businesses as an automated service over the years,” he says. The company is completely bootstrapped and after two years in the business, is now seeking funding.
Froogal is a one-stop solution for all brick and mortar businesses, that helps in the increase of revenues. Technologies like AI and machine learning are used to make things easy for business owners to maximise revenue and cut costs. Froogal is available in more than 500 locations in six cities across India and will soon expand to USA and UK.
Shedding some light about how his start-up took shape, Jeevan says, “I was one of the kids whom the corporate intermediate colleges picked up for intense training to fuel their factory of rankers. I was conditioned to think that I will land a fancy rank and a seat in an IIT and study Computer Science and walk out with a fat pay package.”
However, fate had something else in store for him. “I got through to IIT Hyderabad, but I got through to Electronics department. I could change to Computer Science only if I could get a certain score in the first year. I fell short and had to repeat the year because I was keen on getting into Computer Science Engineering,” he says.
Meanwhile, something else was brewing in Jeevan’s mind. He noticed the issue that students in his campus and the small vendors had in and around the university. “Our campus was in the outskirts and it was difficult to find anything let alone loose cash. So most students would leave credit at the local vendors and sometimes completely forget about it for years together. This was before digital wallets were introduced. So I built an e-wallet for students in the campus which exploded within the college,” says the 23-year-old.
The idea grew to become a coupons portal which got the users a cashback and local businesses had loyal customers. With the help of the incubator in the college, he worked on this project during his free time. “We didn’t know what start-up meant then,” he adds. Jeevan also set up ‘campus ambassadors’ — friends who spread the word — for his brand in other colleges.
Sharing his suggestion to the younger generation, he says, “It’s great to start early. And by early it doesn’t have to be as early as me. Even starting up after college is early enough. But have your goals set, believe in them and work towards them genuinely.”
In a Nutshell
● Jeevan Chowdary became an entrepreneur in 2016
● Froogal is entirely bootstrapped and paid for itself, and is currently seeking funding for expansion
● It functions in over 500 locations in over six cities across India
● In 2019, Froogal plans on expanding to USA and UK