Meet Plutomen Technologies & Reelo! Two startups from Ahmedabad, they embody the spirit of the ecosystem in their city. Read more about the Ahmedabad ecosystem here.
Plutomen Technologies
Plutomen Technologies provides augmented and virtual reality solutions to enterprises. Their core focus is the remote collaboration and assistance between field service operators and offsite employees. The startup majorly helps with remote troubleshooting, inspection, and maintenance.
They do not believe much in mission or vision as much as they believe in the purpose of their startup. Their purpose is to improve the efficiency and downtime of any equipment. They focus on utility by helping enterprises with productivity, collaboration, and skill upgrading.
Funding is still in process. The founder believes the key is to understand when and how to raise funds. Currently, Plutomen Technologies have been shortlisted along with 11 startups in a cohort with JioGen. This cohort is helping them get in touch with numerous venture capitalist funds in and outside Ahmedabad.
Challenges & Future Plans
Challenges for the startup have been two-fold. Firstly, finding human resources who can understand technology has not been easy. There is not only a lack of understanding and training in terms of utility but the mindset of people is also judgemental towards artificial and virtual reality. Finally, initial funding was a huge hurdle. As a solution, the startup had to resort to debt.
Read more about the journey and experience of Plutomen Technologies – https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/taking-augmented-reality-to-the-workfloor/articleshow/71669036.cms
Establishing thought leadership is the core marketing strategy that they use. Videos and blogs have helped them in creating a niche and to get a good inbound strategy. The startup soon plans to start an outbound campaign. Moreover, since they believe that good referrals increases reach, creating communities is on their list.
Plutomen Technologies realize that the mindset of their target audience has changed during the pandemic. Earlier, they were looking at international expansion but now their immediate goal is to revolve and evolve around remote assistance and collaboration. Secondly, they plan to expand across geographies and look for channel partners across countries.
In this transparent, vibrant, and ever-evolving ecosystem, Plutomen Technologies aims to establish a strong presence in the B2B domain and then expand their horizon in the same industry.
Reelo
Reelo is a SAAS customer intelligence and marketing automation platform. It enables Small & Medium Enterprise retailers to communicate with their customers not only in a personalized way but also in an incredibly simple manner. The aim of Reelo is to enable millions of retailers to dramatically improve their customer retention and provide them with the tools to effectively engage their customers. Reelo’s platform allows retailers to create personalized experiences and communication for every individual user across their customer journey, all automatically.
Like Macintosh democratized computers and Google democratized information; Reelo aims to democratize Customer Engagement. They make intelligent customer engagement affordable, accessible and high performant for the SME retailers who are non-marketers.
Read more about Reelo’s SaaS approach to retaining and engaging customers –
https://inc42.com/startups/reelo-customer-engagement-saas-convince-indias-tech-shy-smbs/
Challenges & Future Plans
Marketing strategy for each kind of startup is highly important. Reelo focussed on a direct sales model with an outbound approach in the first 2 years which gave them a deep understanding of the SME retail market. In fact, it also gave them first movers advantage in several Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. However, they now pivoting to a product-led growth approach from a Sales led growth approach for the next phase of growth and plan to focus heavily on inbound marketing and partnerships.
Amongst various challenges, one that is worth mentioning was to find the right mentors to guide them in the early growth stage. This is often overlooked, but having a mentor early on who has knowledge of the space you are working in is super important to ensure that you’re building for the long-run. Reelo learnt this the hard way.
Finally, Reelo is crystal clear about their future plans- they are looking to grow from 2000 businesses in India to 100,000 businesses globally in the next few years and are passionate about bringing Big Data to the informal economy. We all are excited to see what the future holds for them!
Contributed by:
Anoushka Chopra & Sanskriti Bhatnagar
Headstart Network Foundation