WooplrPlatform that connects people interested in same type of products Published On: Tuesday, March 17, 2015 Views 4599

There was a time when people went out for shopping be it for clothes or anything else; but times changed and now the world has gone online. The items which were once displayed on mannequins outside the shops are now displayed on websites and online shopping portals. And leading the league we have Wooplr helping you out with that.

Now to all those who are thinking that it’s just like any other shopping portal, you’re wrong! Wooplr is way beyond that. Wooplr is a platform connecting people with local businesses based on interests, location and social circles. It’s a place where there are awesome products to choose from and when you click on the product tile it takes you to a page which has all the information about the product like; what it is, which shop you get it in, shop address, comments, reviews, etc.

Now the products are not just limited to clothes and stuff but they have multiple categories such as

People I Follow, Trending, Everything, Clothing, Accessories, Handbags, Shoes, Home & Living, Food & Drink, Beauty & Collectibles, to shop from.

But Wooplr was not just a random over night idea; as a matter of fact it was a much planned move which took months to get in action.

So it all began in the summer of 2012, when Arjun Zacharia, undergraduate degree from NIT & founder of Wooplr, just like every other person suffered the pain points of shopping like what to buy and from where? What others were buying? What were the latest trends, social circles, current location, etc.

This gave them the ultimate solution to all their problems and with a collective funding of INR 10 Lakhs from his and his co-founders (Praveen Rajaretnam, Soumen Sarkar and Ankit Sabharwal) savings that solution gave birth to ‘”WOOPLR” in the month of April 2012 and ran in private beta mode for a while to test it.

Now it wasn’t that Arjun was a fresher to all this, he had a prior work experience of 8 years in companies like Intel, McAfee, Integral and Tavant followed by running a website called auto404.org – a grievance redressal portal for traffic violations in Bangalore, and he knew what he was doing.

For a year they ran the website on private beta mode and took feedbacks from friends and people who used it, as a matter of fact, they met the first 500 users of Wooplr and based on their feedbacks they improvised on features and finally when the MVP was ready they launched the public beta In March 2013. Along with the online version of Wooplr they also launched Android and iOS Apps.

Within 2 months of launch they managed to gain 8000 registered users on the online portal and approximately 2000+ downloads on a daily basis from the Android and iOS Apps collectively.

In no time they gained momentum in Bangalore and decided to move to cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, etc. The word was spreading like fire amongst the youth and especially women. Their competitors; Sweetcouch & Scraphere, too became cautious of their popularity.

But the biggest twist to their story came when they launched their new feature called ‘Nearby’ for the android apps. This feature helped locate the best places to shop and eat or for that matter what is good near to them on the basis of information from friends, shopaholics & foodies. It also came with a search option which allowed users to look up specific products based on their choice.

This was their final blow to their rivals and from there onwards, there was no looking back for them. But a fact that still needs to be looked at is that till now they are not making any money from the venture and haven’t raised any funds either. They are just surviving on the money that they borrowed from their family and friends.

Although they do understand that to survive the competition and to stand tall in the market a solid financial backing is required and looking at their aforementioned Stats, we don’t think it wouldn’t be a difficult task getting funds as well!

Image credit: www.asianentrepreneur.org, www.wooplr.com