Today, with extensive use of technology in charting behavioral patterns, one would expect seamless connect between shopkeepers/retailers and their customers. Reality appears to be a bit different however. There are hardly any mechanisms for an offline retailer or business owner understand what the customer wants.

Chennai-based Anand Krushnan identified this growing discordance around small businesses, when his father who himself is a small-business owner, pointed it out to him. Baffled, Anand reached out to his colleague, Manish Mehta on how to address this gap that exists and hinders growth for small and medium businesses.

Realising that this is a problem which possibly plagues millions of businesses in India, the duo set out to found Exclusife in 2013, a customer management tool for business owners to understand their customers better and use it to enhance their growth.

For a business owner, it is difficult to distinguish between new, occasional and frequent customers. Neither there are any analytics available which can provide the potential buying capacity of a customer versus another. When it comes to customer retention, an offline retailer has no way of wooing the customer back except for waiting for them to return during the next store sale.

Exclusife tries to solve this problem by introducing a platform for retailers and customers to connect with each other.

From a business owner’s perspective, it helps in enhancing the customer’s in-store experience. When a customer walks into a store, the retailer has no prior knowledge of the customer’s  preference, neither can they invite the customer back. That is where Exclusife is trying to change the game.

After downloading the app, a customer can use it to collect and analyse information about all (both online and offline) store visitors. The Exclusife app offers its services in nearly all the retail verticals, i.e., including apparel, beauty products, electronics, footwear, furniture, games and entertainment gifts, food and fitness. Since a retailer can be privy to the information searched by customer, he/she can use targeted messaging and promotions to attract the customers.

In 2013, a study by market research firm Zinnov had stated that India is all set to become the largest SME nation globally.