QUEEN’S ROAD: Goodbox, started by Bengaluru-based entrepreneurs, allows businesses to connect with customers over chat for orders, feedback and transactions.
The team comprises Abey Zachariah, Mahesh Herle, Mohit Maheshwari, Anand Kelaginamani and Charan Shetty.
The company, which started operations in March, recently received two lakh dollars in seed funding, led by Manipal Media Networks. It is now raising a pre-series A round in which TaxiFor Sure co-founder, Aprameya Radhakrishna and redBus co-founder, Charan Padmaraju, will be participating, along with the existing seed round investors.
Abey Zachariah says, “The current breed of chat apps is meant for peer-to-peer communication and is not tuned for business-to-customer communication. Goodbox will fill this gap.”
The app enables businesses to put up photographs, send bulk messages to customers, set up store timings, mark their location on the map and even share the list of products and services they offer.
A business can register with the app and access their account from multiple phones or the web. While it is free for customers, businesses will have to pay `500 a year, after the first year.
“It will cost a business lakhs to make even a simple app and support will always be a hassle. At Goodbox, we keep upgrading the technology at no additional cost,” Zachariah says.
Currently, there are over 550 registered businesses using the platform to reach out to about 20,000 customers. “Goodbox not only allows chat but also provides a store to have a customised shop front. For example, Veglife, one of the businesses on the platform, lists the fruits and vegetables on offer and updates the pricing daily through a simple process,” Zachariah explains.
With Goodbox, he believes, even small business can play on a par with dedicated online players.
When a customer likes the services provided by a company, he or she can ‘favourite’ it. The search order on the app is based on the number of favourites each company has. And by hitting search, a customer can find a list of businesses in one place. This is a useful feature as people are averse to downloading too many apps on their phones.
Goodbox mimics the real world shopping scene in many ways, says Zachariah.
Customers can interact with businesses in their own language, which can be registered with the app in the beginning.
And the group will soon develop an online payment option in association with an authorised wallet service to enable businesses to collect payments from customers.
