Forget search engines. This local market on chat has you covered

(left to right) Yellow Messenger co-founders Jaya Kishore Reddy, Anik Das, and Rashid Khan

Today’s world lives in a time where the terms “yellow pages” or “white pages” are remembered more as makeshift step stools than information directories. But a startup in India swears the yellow pages are the future.

“The biggest difference between this and search engines is that it’s a product search rather than a data search,” says Raghu Ravinutala, co-founder and CEO of Yellow Messenger, a chat-powered online marketplace.

Yellow Messenger allows users to search for products and services based on location. The app customizes each user’s experience based on his or her search history. People can also narrow their searches by parameters, including product, color, and price. A chatting function, similar to that of Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger, allows customers to talk to store partners and ask them questions.

Raghu believes that bringing chat into ecommerce allows space for a little bit of personalization in an online world. He comes from a technology background and has worked for companies such as Texas Instruments and Broadcom in the past, but the idea for Yellow Messenger started much more simply – with a pair of shoes.

“ I ordered some shoes from [Indian lifestyle ecommerce site] Myntra and got them delivered,” Raghu tells Tech in Asia. “Two days later, I went to a local shop to get my racket stringed, and I could see a version of those shoes at the same price at a shop that was nearby.”

If he had known that those shoes were available at a local store, he would have gone there to try them on instead of waiting for an online delivery. So he mulled over the idea of creating an app that found and compared products and services across multiple locations. Then, he realized that the idea was universal enough to apply to more than just shoes.

His final inspiration for the app was his mother.

“My mom was late to the tech revolution,” explains Raghu. “She only got a mobile phone two years back. The only app on her phone that she can use is Whatsapp. She can’t even use Myntra – she gets confused with so many options coming up.” Whatsapp, he adds, is much simpler – you ask for something and get something back.

A messaging app – or rather a messaging platform, because that’s where Raghu sees messaging apps going – can improve online access for the older generation.

“We’ve giving the user the power to access millions of stores and brands from a single perspective,” says Raghu.

The company officially launched in January 2014, about five months after Raghu’s shoe epiphany. While Yellow Messenger was designed with users like Raghu’s mother in mind, its main demographic is 18- to 34 year-old mobile internet users. It makes sense. Millennials love text communication and even steer clear of phone calls if possible.

Following the yellow brick road

Photo credit: Pascal

Foot in the door