Forget plastic cards. Indian app inLoyal brings retail loyalty programs to your mobile

We forget about our retail loyalty cards as soon as we get them. We hate stuffing our wallets or purses with multiple cards, and it is only when we queue up at the store’s billing counter that we wish we had brought its loyalty card along.

Indian startup Forysta Ventures came up with a solution: a digital loyalty ‘card’ called inLoyal. You can leave your plastic cards at home as this Android/iOS app stores all your loyalty programs in your phone, and lets you benefit from all the deals, discounts, and other rewards that brands offer their loyal customers. And you don’t have to submit your mobile number at the counter to show that you are a regular either.

The retailers gain from this too, as the app moonlights as a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to engage with their loyal clientele.

Kunal Mehta, cofounder of Forysta, tells Tech in Asia:

The best way to run a brand loyalty program today is to have it on mobile. But most retailers do not have the technology mettle for it, and nor do they want to develop it in-house as that’s not their core focus. On inLoyal, retailers can create and manage loyalty programs, integrate them with store-fronts, and host them on the cloud. They can also migrate an existing loyalty program to this platform with all data and dynamics remaining constant.

Pitching it as a mobile shopping enabler, the inLoyal team has loaded the app with other user-friendly features too. Through the app, you can avail of offers, redeem points, and also use net banking for payment. You can virtually check-in to the store via Facebook, interact with brands on Twitter, and get queries answered in-app. “We are in the customer delight space,” Mehta says.

And the catch is …

Loyalty programs are relatively new in India. Stores like Shoppers Stop, LifeStyle, and Westside introduced them a few years ago. But now, most major brands are running such programs. Loyalty marketing research firm Colloquy pegs the number of loyalty programme members in India at over 35 million. The market is estimated to be US$839 million (INR 50 billion). According to a report by mobile marketing service provider Snipp, the loyalty market in the US, which is estimated to be US$54 billion, is growing at 20 percent per year. US companies spent US$22.7 billion on incentives and loyalty gift cards alone in 2012-2013.

Mehta started Forysta in 2008 with his wife, Urvi. They launched SalenOffers, an information portal where customers could look for deals and coupons relevant to their city, in 2009.