Startup Q&A: Abhishek Dadoo, Director, Shoffr

RTIH: Tell us about Shoffr

AD: Shoffr is an online to offline (O2O) omnichannel commerce platform for retail brands. We allow them to convert online engagements into an opportunity for footfall with deterministic footfall tracking.

Shoffr integrates with the brand’s online channels such as website, social media, Facebook Messenger chatbot, WhatsApp chatbot, etc and tracks who is interested in what, where, and which retail store the customer ended up in.

We launched in 2017, got seed funded by Techstars in 2018, and were acquired by Affle in 2019. 

RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?

AD: Today, brands spend significant budgets to drive online engagements in hopes of converting users on e-commerce. However, e-commerce conversions remain at a paltry 0.5% - 1% range.

To serve the remaining 99% and re-capture their interest, our platform provides the option to discover products are nearby in stores and improves the odds for conversion for that 99% lost traffic. Improving digital ROI and providing deterministic offline attribution is in the core DNA of Shoffr. 

RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?

AD: Retail brands are just now coming out of D2C e-commerce euphoria. Discover online and purchase in-store is the new reality for most of those with significant online and offline footprints. However, the customer journey remains disjointed for most brands and stitching together a unified customer journey and experience is just now becoming fashionable.

We have seen tremendous success with early adopters of our solution in SE Asia, India, and Middle East markets. Now we are looking to scale in these home markets and beyond into Europe and the USA.

RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?

AD: The biggest challenge is that most brands operate in channel silos. The mandate given to digital marketing revolves solely around e-commerce sales. But leveraging the digital audience to drive offline sales is not part of their KPI and may end up in channel conflict.

Our customer data platform puts the customer in the centre and requires digital marketing, store operations, and technology to work in unison to provide customer delight.

“The customer journey remains disjointed for most brands and stitching together a unified customer journey and experience is just now becoming fashionable”

RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the omnichannel retail sector right now?

AD: Few understand the economics of the various customer journey permutations possible in omnichannel retail. With time, CMO’s are evolving into Chief Digital Officers and Customer Experience Officers. This fusion of marketeer and technologist will pave the way to omnichannel retail. 

RTIH: What's the best question about your company or the market asked of you recently by a.) an investor and b.) a customer?

AD: Haven’t spoken with an investor in a long time. But the best meeting with one back in the day went as follows…The investor asked me “who buys anything in stores these days?” My response was: “Where did you buy the watch you are wearing today? The shoes? The glasses? The shirt?”.

He got the point that e-commerce is largely controlled by marketplaces and for brand.com to find its footing is excruciatingly difficult, especially with the investor funded models of e-commerce marketplaces.

Customer: Isn’t a probabilistic estimate of footfall good enough? Why go through the pain of setting up a platform for deterministic? We feel that the probabilistic estimate of footfall is just a starting point.

Probabilistic estimate with incrementality is the next step but it still serves the fast food brands better. Brands selling high ticket items such as fashion, furniture, etc. prefer tracking as close to the Point of Sale as possible.

RTIH: What can we expect to see from Shoffr over the next 12 months?

AD: Our long-term vision is to make Shoffr the world's leading O2O commerce platform provider. As this O2O segment continues its evolution, we look forward to branching out to retailers of all sizes and making the shopping experience enjoyable again for customers.

We will be rolling out our Analytics and Re-targeting platform this year and that will be a key area of focus this year.