MySmartPrice Success Story
With all the portals online that provide effortless shopping experience online, it becomes difficult for the consumers to determine the best prices of their desired products. To make this task handy and simpler, Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray founded MySmartPrice in 2011.
Read this article to know more about MySmartPrice, how it works, founders, business model, revenue model, challenges, competitors, funding, wiki, and growth.
MySmartPrice - Company Highlights
- Startup Name-MySmartPrice
- Headquarter-Hyderabad, India
- Sector-E-commerce, Price Comparison
- Founders-Sitakanta Ray, Sulakshan Kumar
- Founded-August 2011
- Legal Name-MySmartPrice Web Technology Pvt. Ltd.
- Website-mysmartprice.com
MySmartPrice - About & How It Works?
MySmartPrice is an online engine that compares the prices of mobiles, books, electronics, cameras, and appliances thereby helping consumers make the best decisions.
MySmartPrice mainly helps users solve two basic problems: what to buy, and where to buy. So this platform facilitates the online shopping experience by providing product comparison. Also for categories like footwear and fashion, MySmartPrice has a range of filters like best discounts that help the platform to come up with a consolidated bestseller list with the popular products and their specifications. So all in all, the idea is to provide the users with the best deals but also provide information about all the deals.
So basically, what MySmartPrice does is that it lists the prices of all the products across top eCommerce sites. Because of the dynamic pricing models of the e-commerce portals, these prices are periodically refreshed by MySmartPrice to improve the accuracy of the product pricing. In the cases of extremely popular products, the prices are refreshed every 15 minutes.
This portal makes sure that all possible discounts are informed to the user with embedded coupons so that the user can make wiser purchases. The co-founders had initially started the portal with books and then they gradually moved to mobile phones, comparing prices of various stores. Soon the mobiles category picked up, this portal attracted over 1 Million users a month. The co-founders in the long run also plan to list every single product that is sold in the Indian online space, on the MySmartPrice website.
“If it is sold online in India, it is available on MySmartPrice”, says Sulakshan.
MySmartPrice is all about letting the consumers make a smart and informed decision about their shopping aesthetics. Hence it’s USP is the portal that lets them compare the product prices across all the major platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, ShopClues to name a few.
MySmartPrice - How It Was Started?
"We had been planning an entrepreneurial journey for almost eight years but could not muster enough courage. Finally, we felt it was now or never,” said Sitakanta Ray.
Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray met in 1998 when they joined NIT Rourkela. After taking their degrees, both the co-founders joined Oracle in Hyderabad. From there they parted ways when Ray joined IIM Bangalore and Kumar joined Infosys.
"Odd as it may seem, I spent time studying management but handled engineering and marketing, while Sulakshan pursued engineering but is today involved in management," added Sitakanta Ray.
What unites the co-founders is their zeal to take on their entrepreneurial journey. For both of them, their chance at the entrepreneurial journeys looked perfect with the price comparison/shopping research platform for the Indian market ideally because it involved the expertise of both product development and technology. And that’s how Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray decided to launch their venture - MySmartPrice.
MySmartPrice - Founders & Team
Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray are the founders of MySmartPrice. Sulakshan Kumar & Sitakanta Ray
Sulakshan has a Bachelors' in Mechanical engineering. He is an alumnus of NIT Rourkela, and also has worked with Sitakanta at Oracle. Before launching MySmartPrice, Sulakshan had also worked at Infosys.
Sitakanta is an alumnus of the prestigious IIM Bangalore, with around seven years of working experience with big names Oracle and ICICI Bank.
MySmartPrice - Business & Revenue Model
MySmartPrice as a website allows users to take a detailed look into the best products ranging from mobiles, electronics, computers, fashion and lifestyle, cameras, books, appliances, and personal care. As we know that the price comparison engine on the portal enables users to find the best price, deals, and offers from major e-commerce stores.
So directly or indirectly, it allows users to access over 10 million products from more than 100 online and offline stores. MySmartPrice also provides exciting things like coupons, offers, gifts without hiding information. MySmartPrice gets revenue as a service paid for each successful transaction done through the portal.
This portal has partnered with a lot many online and offline stores and there it charges a commission for lead generation. With conversion rates going up, revenues also rise. More than 80% of the revenue for MySmartPrice comes from the affiliate income i.e., a commission from promoting affiliate products on the site, and close to 18% of the revenue is generated from advertising and online directory services.
MySmartPrice - Startup Challenges
One of the major challenges MySmartPrice faced was when they started in 2010. This challenge was a limited budget. So to reach their target audience, it stuck to its core value of creating a robust product and focusing on Search Engine Optimization to get the first few customers onboard. This tactic really helped the company in developing a strong product range and retaining a large customer base.
There was one other challenge that the company faced in its initial days of inception. It was the very hurdle of attracting the right talent in the organization. However, MySmartPrice as a company never compromised on the kind of human resources it was looking for to build a team. To date, acquiring the right people continues to remain a big challenge, but the problem today is to choose the right talent rather than attracting more candidates.
MySmartPrice - Competitors
MySmartPrice has quite a few competitors in the market. For instance, Smartprix is perceived to be one of the biggest rivals of the company. Other competitors include companies Buyt, PriceRaja, Junglee, PriceDekho, MagicPrix, to name a few.
MySmartPrice - Funding & Investors
MySmartPrice has received total funding of around $12 million till now.
2012 Seed Round $370K Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners
January 2014 Series A $1 Million Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners
MySmartPrice is funded by 2 investors - Helion Venture Partners and Accel Partners.
MySmartPrice - Growth
Initially, the company had ventured into just offline listing. Soon it went on to online and offline listings in cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Delhi MySmartPrice claims to have offline partners generating business worth $2-3M every month. More than 4 million users across the country make use of the service every month.
MySmartPrice - FAQ's
What is MySmartPrice?
MySmartPrice is an online engine that compares the prices of mobiles, books, electronics, cameras, and appliances thereby helping consumers make the best decisions.
Who is the founder of MySmartPrice?
Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray are the founders of MySmartPrice.
What services does MySmartPrice provide?
MySmartPrice mainly helps users solve two basic problems: what to buy, and where to buy. So this platform facilitates the online shopping experience by providing product comparison.
Who are the investors of MySmartPrice?
MySmartPrice is funded by 2 investors - Helion Venture Partners and Accel Partners.
Who are the competitors of MySmartPrice?
Smartprix is perceived to be one of the biggest rivals of the company. Other competitors include companies Buyt, PriceRaja, Junglee, PriceDekho, MagicPrix, to name a few.
MySmartPrice - Conclusion
MySmartPrice is a high-growth venture-backed startup that runs the largest comparison shopping site in India with over 20 Million user visits per month. They help people easily find ‘what to buy’ and ‘where to buy from’ and help them make better and wiser purchases. The company is present across multiple categories including Mobiles, Electronics, Computers, Books, Apparel and Shoes, Fashion accessories, Home décor etc. MySmartPrice aims to provide users with the best price of products both among online stores as well as the local retailers near them.