Satyajeet Patnayak: With Fydo, Merchants Can Share Their Inventory With Their Customers Over Whatsapp

Satyajeet Patnayak of Fydo.

Tell us about yourself?

Satyajeet Patnayak (CEO) Mechanical Engineering From CET – Bhubaneshwar, Govt of Odisha Ex-Product Development Manager at Skoda India NIDHI EIR Awardee by Min of Science & Tech Co-Founder of EGreen Vision (Exited) Has 2+ years of experience working in the business development sector.

What lessons has being an entrepreneur taught you? 

hustle hustle hustle, thats the first thing we should learn, not only me everyone as an entrepreneur should understand that

If you could go back in time to when you first started your business, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

hustle hustle hustle, thats the first thing we should learn, not only me everyone as an entrepreneur should understand that

A lot of entrepreneurs find it difficult to balance their work and personal lives. How have you found that?

nope , hustle hustle hustle, thats the first thing we should learn, not only me everyone as an entrepreneur should understand that

Give us a bit of an insight into the influences behind the company?

We have 3 Co-founders each with their unique sets of skills and knowledge to compliments each other, I am a serial entrepreneur who has already co-founded a startup and has successfully exited from it so has got pretty much an idea of how to run a startup property, After that, I worked with Skoda India, and then I left the job and started my own venture.

Our CFO is a retired government officer who has 30+ years of experience in finance and accounts. We have been working together for the past 2 years and have taken this startup to this level aII from scratch.

My CTO is my batchmate and college friend and we have been working together since the second year and have taken several projects in National level competitions and International Hackathons

He is a full stack developer who was already working with MyGate for the past 2 years, and we discuss our idea and since then we aII been working together on this journey.

But the best part is We have a team of 10 other awesome people from NITans to person who has rejected 20lakhs of job offer just to be a part of the team working with us 24/7 for making our startup successful.

What do you think is your magic sauce? What sets you apart from the competitors?

We operate and work on a freemium model, Which we think is best for the type of business we are operating in While our potential competitor’s models is a commission-based revenue model where they tie-up with few specific shops I.e only those shops which pay them a commission,

We operate on a freemium model where we onboard all different kinds of shops, brands, businesses that want to inform their customer for deals and discounts in their products,(we are actually focused on solving the problem rather than going for revenue) and due to this reason we get customers very easily due to vast no of shops and brands we have on our platform.

Our revenue generation model is through AdTech Customers pay only after purchasing a product or using any services In our competitors model, customers have to buy vouchers of some fixed amount and then they can use them to purchase from their merchant,

But with Ifyd customers can pay directly at the shop after purchasing any product or using any service Our customers don’t have to buy vouchers beforehand so they pay only after making a purchase

How have you found sales so far? Do you have any lessons you could pass on to other founders in the same market as you just starting out?

We are currently having more than 1 lakh 20 thousand customers and 10,500+ channel partners with us registered from 5 cities in 2 different states which have made more than 1.5​6 lakh transactions in the last 6 months. We have got a GMV of 2.5 crores through which we have generated a revenue of 20 lakhs.

Our average visitor uses our app 43 times a month. Compare to last 2 month our revenue rate increased by 200%

What is the biggest challenge you have faced so far in your business, and how did you overcome it?

Earlier in around September last year when we started our startup almost 90% of the operations were offline without much tech involved, everything was going well but slowly we got the idea that we couldn’t scale much if we will follow the offline business, and after that this covid came and we decided this may be the best time to take it online.

It took 4 months to create a tech team and other support and finally, we shifted everything online

What do you consider are the main strengths of operating your business in India and the specific state you are in over other states in India?

Our app’s use is not limited to only our own merchants and for selected cities In our competitors, their operations or use of their app are only limited to their own merchants because the app is of no use if the shop is not their registered merchant but with fydo, customers can get information about all kind of deals and discounts from different shops in their city and also any kind of sales from different brands in a city because we collect the information irrespective of whether we are directly connected with the brand or shop financially or not also any customer from any city can use the app to pay at any shop irrespective of having our channel partner in that city or not and that’s one of our major advantages

For our Merchants, Customers are not limited to any of the contacts in their contact list; With fydo, merchants can share their inventory with their customers over WhatsApp but their customers are not limited to it as in the case with our competitors, because fydo too helps in providing customers to the merchant by providing rewards to customers for purchasing through our app

If you could operate your business in another state in India rather than the State you are in, which state would it be and why?

Across States, i will start in almost every state by next year

India has an incredibly diverse population. How has the affected your consumer base and business?

We need the diverse population, its a boon for us

Infrastructure is really important to businesses. How have you seen India’s infrastructure improve recently? Do you see new opportunities opening up?

yes new opportunities are really opening up and that is very good for everyone not only our startup so its good.

What do you want to accomplish in the next 5 years with your business?

Our app records and studies customer behavior on the type of shops they visit or brands they prefer or the amount they usually like to spend on services and then our app uses these data and adapts to it to show these categories of shops or brands and to give them a preference and these learnings and adaptations are different for every individual customer In the future

We can aIso provide these data to other brands and markets (similar to CRED future pIan)

And finally, if people want to get involved and learn more about your business, how should they do that?

Nope it didn’t affect our business

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