Betaout, a Noida startup offering user engagement tools to e-commerce sites

There are many startups building technologies to support the booming e-commerce industry. One of the important factors is customer engagement that helps convert a user into a buyer, and Noida-based Betaout is helping do just that. It calls itself an all in one e-commerce and B2C marketing software platform, allowing e-commerce companies to build user intelligence databases. It provides tools to engage with users through email, on-site engagement, mobile push, live-chat, SMS and other channels. The startup focuses on increasing conversions and personalising user engagement using real-time user persona and intent data.  It is the second Indian startup to get incubated at the premier accelerator in Chicago called Techstars last year. And also was part of Nikkei Pioneers Asia in Tokyo where it was the only Indian startup to be selected. “E-commerce platforms can integrate our software into their existing systems with a simple javascript plug in. The process takes only a few minutes and doesn’t require any technical know-how,” co-founder Ankit Maheshwari tells us. The platform is available on web and app versions for any e-commerce platform and currently serving over 150 e-commerce companies across the world including. Some of its prominent clients are Paytm, Lenskart and Tokopedia (e-commerce platform in Indonesia). The startup is founded by brother duo Ankit Maheshwari and Arjun Maheshwari, along with Nandini Rathi, Raghubir Thakur, and Mayank Dhingra. Today, they are a team of over 55 employees. Ankit is an engineer from Aligarh Muslim University and has been a serial entrepreneur for the past decade. Arjun comes with a law degree from AMU and has been involved with startups for the past decade. Rathi recently sold her last company Instamedia, which was doing over 20M page views per month, Thakur  was the VP of Technology and CTO at Citizen Media Limited, and Dhingra, is a graduate from Delhi College of Engineering with over 10 years of working with startups. Maheshwari tells us how a coffee machine ordered from an online site and a message from the site offering discount on the same product a few days later led to the creation of Betaout. “My brother and I were very excited after the successful exit of our previous startup. In order to celebrate the same we ordered an expensive coffee machine from one of India’s leading e-commerce site. It was pretty expensive and we paid the full price for it. In about a day’s time we had it delivered. However after a week I received an email marketing message from the same e-commerce company offering a 25% discount on the same coffee machine. I was unhappy for having paid the full price for the same just a week back. I immediately sent the old coffee machine back and asked for a refund,” he said. This is how he figured the loophole in marketing channels. “It was not uncommon that e-commerce companies send the same marketing messages to customers who have already purchased the same product. This did not make sense to me. Clearly there was disconnect between the various tools used by the e-commerce companies. Sales has no insight  about the tech. The tech has no insight about the customer care. The customer team has no insight about the marketing and so forth,” he added. Betaout differentiates itself from the competition, by offering a customised set of tools tailored to the needs of e-commerce players.  “Betaout’s tools are designed to serve all the needs of an e-commerce company rather than a single vertical,” he said. Arjun Maheshwari adds, “The integration required to capture data is difficult. It is far more tedious for initial integration. We focus only on e-commerce companies as our data capture is targeted at e-commerce.” From e-commerce, personalisation is very important. Sending emails to the complete list at one time doesn’t work. A targeted message will help customers as well as businesses, Arjun further explains. Adding about security, he said, “Our platform is encrypted end to end for our clients so only they can access the data and all the data gathered from users is anonymised adding another layer of security.” It operates on the SaaS model and charge clients a recurring fee depending on their needs from our software suite that serves as the revenue channel. Betaout has raised $2 million  from prominent industry figures including  Amit Ranjan (co-founder, Slideshare), Ankur Warikoo (CEO, Groupon India), Ashish Kashyap (CEO, Ibibo Group), Kunal Bahl (CEO and co-founder, Snapdeal), to name a few. The company plans to expand to other markets around the world. The company has set sight on South East Asian market, and meanwhile plans to scale up the team. The tech team is also working on adding features requests by clients.