Mobmerry to make Indiranagar in Bengaluru an IoT- enabled shopping district

BENGALURU: Interaction One, a Bangalore-based digital publishing startup, has launched Mobmerry, an app that connects retailers to consumers through product discovery, real-time notifications of new products, deals, and discounts in the consumers’ immediate area.

The app allows shoppers to virtually explore their city and trigger personalized offers, products and food recommendations in real-time. Mobmerry aims at bringing the retail stores to consumer phones, thereby driving consumers to the store through target marketing using geo-location. A merchant can showcase his products with the touch of a button and has been provided with a facility to push live marketing feeds directed to a specific target audience. The app alerts the retailer of the customer’s basic details and preferences as soon as the customer walks into the store.

Krishna Prasad, CEO and Co-founder, Interaction One, said, “Stores and brands that deliver easy integrated ways between digital and physical are the ones that are going to succeed, this means having technology that has these tools and solutions. Mobmerry delivers the power of smart discovery of products using a taste and preferences algorithm for consumers and a platform for retailers to take the physical world to these connected consumers via Beacons (IOT).”

According to a report published by SAP, The Internet of Things (IoT) will generate $329 billion of revenue in the retail sector by 2018. Retail is expected to be one of the biggest sectors benefitting from the rise of IoT. The future of the retail sector is in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) applications, known as beacons.  Interaction One claims that it will be the first company to deploy over 1,000 beacons across Bangalore, making it one of the largest beacon deployments in India. This will make Bangalore the first city to be lit up and connected virtually.

India is considered to be the world’s fifth-largest global destination in the retail space. However, a report published by property advisor Knight Frank India and lobby group Retailers Association of India, estimated that the share of modern trade in retail would slip from 17% in 2013 to 13% in 2019, while that of e-commerce would jump from 2% to 11% in the same period. This considerable drop in the share of retail outlets is one of the primary concerns of the merchants. The rapidly growing e-commerce industry has resulted in decrease of footfall and sales for the traditional merchant.

For merchants, beacon technology will provide businesses with large amounts of available data such as how long consumers spend at certain locations, busiest days of the week, and number of people who walk into the location per day. This information can help merchants make tweaks and changes based on the data collected to make their business more efficient.

As many as 30 stores in Bemgaluru are onboarded with Mobmerry in Indiranagar, including Aviraté, Celio, Guess, Jack & Jones, Kazo, Lee, Vans, Vero Moda, Wrangler.

Beacon technology has been provided by Kontakt.io, a Polish hardware company funded in 2013. Trevor Longino, Head of Marketing and PR at Kontakt.io said, “As a company, we are constantly looking for ways in which our beacons can make a difference. We are glad that with such a large deployment we will be able to bring local businesses into the Internet of Things era and by that taking the whole local beacon market to the next level.”

Mobmerry has also partnered with Virtuous Retail, an institutionally owned developer-operator of community-oriented premium Lifestyle Shopping Centres for its latest flagship development, VR Bengaluru on Whitefield main road. Mobmerry will deploy over 300 Beacons across the centre to enhance shopping experiences for VR Bengaluru’s patrons.

Ankit Samdariya, Vice President, Virtuous Retail / Xander Group said, “We are excited to be partnering with Mobmerry in our efforts to enhance customer engagement at VR Bengaluru. Mobmerry will aid us in sending personalized offers and promotions in real time to our customers to complement their purchases. In due course, our patrons would be able to explore VR Bengaluru virtually from the comfort of their homes through this platform.”