PerkStash Will Help Singaporean Vendors Keep Their Customers

Gary Gan and the team from PerkStash, a Singapore-based startup, took the stage at Startup Arena this afternoon to pitch their product. In short, PerkStash is a service that helps metchants retain customers and customers earn loyalty rewards.

Gan, an entrepreneur who owns a small business in Singapore, told the audience that he was inspired to create this startup because he was frustrated with traditional loyalty programs, which he found slow and ineffective. PerkStash, he says, is exactly the opposite: efficient and effective.

Basically, when customers make a purchase or do something else to help a business (for example, refer a friend) they can earn reward points by simply entering their email into a web app and clicking submit. On the back end, users can see how many points they have earned, and convert their points to vouchers that get them free goodies. The system also helps merchants by automatically sending vouchers to “lapsed customers” — anyone who hasn’t been back to the store in over a month — to entice them back. PerkStash itself takes a percentage of the voucher values from merchants as its service fee.

The service is still in closed beta, but Gan says the results are promising so far. One merchant who didn’t have an email database of customers before PerkStash has now built a database of hundreds in under a month. Over its ten beta outlets, the service has more than 30,000 users, but it’s targeting 500 merchants and 500,000 users by the end of its first year. Gan estimates — conservatively, he claims — that that would produce more than $6 million in revenue for PerkStash.

The startup is currently looking for seed funding and team members.

Some judges seemed to like this one too. “That looks good,” said Benjamin Joffe, although he also said he wasn’t sure how big a company like this had potential to be. Daniel Saito admitted the company is addressing a real problem, but he says the idea isn’t uncommon, and in fact, Facebook is working on it. “What are you going to do when Facebook does it?” Gan said that most customers who visit a store don’t become Facebook fans of a company, and implied that his company could help SMEs retain more users.

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Jakarta 2012, our startup event running on June 8 and 9. For the rest of our Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @startupasia, on our Facebook page, on Google Plus, or via RSS.