Tagalys wants to improve conversion rates for online retailers

Antony Kattukaran of Tagalys

Antony Kattukaran started his career as a management consultant with Deloitte based out of New York, spending seven years with the multinational company. However, something just didn’t click. Despite describing himself as a “good” consultant, Kattukaran believed that he was not in full control of his destiny, and corporate rules were getting in the way of his career. After extensive business trips to his home country, India, Kattukaran realized that the local market was ripe for tech-based disruptive businesses to prosper. Soon, he quit his job and moved back.

At the time, the hottest segment in the Indian startup ecosystem was ecommerce. Kattukaran started a niche ecommerce company focusing on the premium home category, but soon found it difficult to compete with heavyweights such as Flipkart and Snapdeal. As marketing costs ballooned, and customer acquisition became prohibitively expensive, Kattukaran was fast burning through his cash reserves with little to show for it. He was forced to shut shop.

Despite what can be perceived as a failure, the founder insists that his experience offered him plenty of silver linings. Kattukaran sensed an opportunity in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) segment, helping smaller ecommerce stores with more intelligent and intuitive search models. To help further solidify his product, Kattukaran brought his developer, Palaniappan Chellappan, on board as a co-founder and Tagalys was born. “I am glad to have made mistakes and learned from them,” Kattukaran tells Tech in Asia.

Tagalys, a Chennai-based startup, aims to help traditional retail outlets with their online presence. It has an intelligent search tool which ecommerce companies can integrate into their architecture via an API. Kattukaran explains that while ecommerce giants such as Flipkart, Amazon, and Snapdeal can afford to hire teams to develop intelligent search systems, smaller players cannot do so. That is the market which Tagalys targets.

Confused retailers

“Conversion rate is one of the most important metrics of success in ecommerce and by adopting the intelligent search model provided by Tagalys, startups can see that rise by 30 percent,” asserts a confident Kattukaran.

To elucidate his point, Kattukaran opens the site of a popular fashion label based in Australia. He explains that the brand has annual sales of approximately US$100 million, but most of them in offline retail. A simple search for “black dresses” shockingly reveals zero results, and does not suggest any alternatives either. There are no options for filtering, or browsing through product categories.

“Traditional retail outlets do not understand the online space, or the necessity to invest in a seamless web experience,” explains Kattukaran. “Tagalys can help bridge the gap.”

Tagalys co-founders

Tagalys does more than just providing intelligent results based on search queries. It uses an algorithm to determine similar “recommended” products that are also added to the results page after a user enters a search query. Furthermore, there are also options to filter search results based on a number of categories, as well as a “related search” result which alerts users to what others are searching for.

Kattukaran explains that his solution can be customized according to the need of each client, and that he spends a lot of time initially understanding their needs before the product is deployed. “I never want a client to come back to me and say that they could have done a better job in-house,” he adds.