Our vision is to make mydala a daily habit: Anisha Singh

mydala has drawn up an aggressive expansion plan of reaching 10 lakh merchants in three years and a net revenue of Rs 100 crore in the current year, how do you plan to scale up so fast?
Yes, we've set such targets for ourselves for the coming year. The couponing industry is not written off yet, and if you study the China model, there are big similarities with how the market is growing in India. We are growing at a break-neck speed and scalability is not an issue right now. Today, mydala is India's leading local services marketing platform. We are present in 209 cities and have 28 million registered users. mydala was started in 2009 to fulfill a need for local businesses to market themselves, when they did not other means or the advertising dollars to do so. We provided them with that opportunity and today we've worked with about 1.5 lakh merchants. mydala's strength lies in our analytics engine, which helps in reaching out to the right audience in a targeted basis. With deeper penetration and expansion of cities, using hyper local we plan to achieve our target.

Are you sufficiently funded for the kind of growth you are eyeing? When do you plan to approach the market for the next round of funding? How much do you plan to raise and for what?
The good part of our business is that we have been profitable for the last two years. So you know, we are not a cash-hungry or cash-dependent business. So for us know, as we go about our business, this space is pretty hard to take. If you see historically, we haven't raised much capital till date. What we have done essentially, we have grown 100% year on year (year-on-year) with a neutral Ebitda (Earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation) for the last two years. All along, our focus has been on building a long- term sustainable business. So, what we do is, essentially, churn our profits back in the business, to grow fast. I believe that the best time to raise money is when you don't need it. We'll see, obviously we are profitable and are going aggressive. There is a lot of interest in mydala as a company.

What are your plans in terms of extending your footprint to new verticals and geographies? Would you look at going about it in an inorganic way?
Our vision is to make mydala a daily habit. So, you know we have already mentioned the categories we are in, but our roadmap is to go deeper, and reach out to more neighbourhoods into the currently existing categories. We've recently forayed into the grocery vertical and it's doing very well. As well as open up new categories which are to do with utilities. Anything which speaks to the consumer in India and forms a daily consumption habit, be it groceries, utilities we will take up those categories.

We have just been able to increase our foothold in 209 cities and have worked at consolidating our presence in these cities. For example, if you are in Delhi or Mumbai or Bhubaneshwar, you will notice a lot of relevant deals for every consumer. For us, it is important we can reach a consumer who may be a student, or a housewife, or a home maker, they should have something that they see on mydala.

Delhi in itself is equivalent to six cities. Even within Gurgaon or Delhi, we have split zone-wise. In the already existing 200 cities, I don't think anyone else is investing so much for understanding the buying behaviour for the local deals that we offer across these cities.

You have been one of the early entrants in the mobile deal and coupon space, how do you think it has shaped up till now? Did you have to tweak your business model along the way to adjust it to local trends?
According to a Motilal Oswal Report on e-commerce, online coupons/discount marketing is a flourishing global industry, with multiple $1billion-value companies in the US and Chinese market, projected to be even bigger.

Value proposition to SMBs, (small and medium businesses) especially in Tier-II-IV cities, surging mobile internet population and lack of any other platform for effective marketing are all significant drivers. mydala leads the segment with its hyper local marketing platform and reach in over 200 cities, with focus on lower-tier cities.

As the first mover in the deals space, we are the largest, selling more than 1.5 lakh vouchers a day. We have a strategic alliance with all major telcos in the country, and have the widest footprint in the country. Interestingly, smaller cities are contributing more in terms of revenue than the major metros. About 40% of traffic comes from non-Tier 1 cities. Recently, we launched a new vertical for the website and mobile app – grocery listing. The new grocery vertical will allow shoppers to view all offers on grocery items at neighbourhood supermarkets or kirana stores. The launch of the vertical has already witnessed half a million unique visitors. We have the same business model that we had during our inception which is an online to offline (O2O) model. The model was put in place keeping in mind that it had to cater local service merchants, so no revolutionary adjustments were required. It's working out well for us.

Is India ready for the big leap in this space? Are the government policies supportive and digital infrastructure in place for you to provide your services across India?
Absolutely. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy task, but the Indian ecosystem is gradually becoming more and more conducive for new ideas to take root and flourish. The 'Make in India' campaign is also a great initiative to encourage local businesses to thrive. It's still not easy for small businesses to get the right amount of funding and the infrastructure but I'm hopeful that things will improve and entrepreneurship will become the most sought-after career option.

Is the competition in this space heating up? What are the challenges you face?
When we started, e-commerce in itself was a fairly new concept. Getting people to try a new idea was fairly challenging. Being an entrepreneur the second time around, I know that any business will have its share of highs and lows. There will be good days and bad days. It's never going to be a cakewalk, and we knew that while getting into this field in the first place. Coming down to the current scenario, if you talk about the local service market, the only one in India which is re-sizeable in business is Just Dial. And Just-Dial just covers in terms of monetisation about 11 cities compared to our 209 cities with a penetration of 36,000 neighbourhoods. Today, 60%of our traffic is outside Tier I cities, and about 45% of our revenue comes from outside them. So, ours is a pan-India play. Our vision is to provide them the digital platform of choice for all local service businesses across India.