Backed by SAIF Partners, Niffler aggregates in-store deals from retailers and offers it to customers on the mobile platform

Madhumita Prabhakar

The problem

When three investment bankers, Viraj Shah, Edul Patel and Prince Arora were scouting for business ideas, they realised they had to look no further than their personal life. Every day when they stepped out for food or drinks, they typically sought places, which had an offer or reward for its customers. And, invariably they would land up at a familiar place time and again because there was no single platform, which gave customers information about offline deals in the city. Thus was born Niffler.

The solution

Niffler is a mobile-based platform which aggregates offline deals from clients (retailers, restaurants, salons and more), and showcases it on the app. Currently, the platform lists over 3,000 offers from 15,000 retailers and has a user base of over 30,000.

The founders chose to adopt a mobile-first strategy to create an Aha! moment for its customers. In simple words, when a customer is at a mall, they can scout for deals at the mall by just opening the app on the phone, an advantage which a website cannot deliver with such ease.

Future outlook

In March 2015, Niffler raised U.S. $1 million from SAIF Partners, with the funds primarily being channelised towards marketing and sales, hiring and improving back-end technology.

While the app is currently active in five cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore), it plans to enter one more city (Chennai) in the near future. A second, bigger focus for the startup will be on securing more exclusive deals on the site, which is currently offered by 300 outlets.

Acquiring the first set of clients 

Acquiring the initial set of clients and customers was like addressing the chicken and egg problem. While the clients (retailers) demanded a reasonable user base, the users sought a good number of deal listings. So, how did they tackle it? They started by listing existing deals by retailers and offering it to its users. Eventually, when they build a good user-base, the retailers began curating specific deals for the app users.

The founders are still experimenting with a viable revenue model, a couple of them being a subscription-based or a commission-based model.