Hyloca

Ecommerce is becoming a vital part of everyday commerce for every type of store with a growth-rate of over 15% in India and over 8% in the UAE. These figures are expected to grow at a rapid pace over the years as 95% of the purchases are expected to happen online by 2040. Online stores with a loud social media presence will get 32% more sales on average than those who do not.

However, small businesses are not capable of competing in this segment as they lack the capital and manpower to manage and market their own online stores. Most SMEs and MSMEs demand platforms that allow them to build stores in the easiest way possible, market them as individual stores in their own brand and also be able to expand as well as retain their customers with the features of an online marketplace. They require support in marketing their stores through their social media accounts, managing their online presence and providing customer support which are essential in growing sales.

Hyloca provides support in all these aspects with our ecommerce features, digital marketing tools and integration of AI. This is crucial in enabling our local SMEs and MSMEs to grow and compete their brands with the current major ecommerce platforms who are focused on taking over the online market share and fueling the sale of their preferred brands leading to loss of revenue for our local retailers.      

Ecommerce has become an integral part in the modern era for any business to build their brand and expand their markets. However, popular online marketplaces do not provide the required stage for small businesses for branding or growing their markets as their products are listed among other competitive big brands in the industry which tend to comparatively lower their sales. 

One of the key solutions to this problem is to have their own individual online stores which is currently a trending method of branding, increasing customers and opening new markets. But it is difficult for most small businesses to deploy their own online stores due to high cost and lack of manpower in managing such stores. They are also unable to provide continuous marketing for such stores or even proper customer support. This is leading to a lack of sales for these businesses as they are unable to brand or expand online like their competitors as more customers move to ecommerce. 

Recognizing this, we created 'Hyloca' (www.hyloca.com) as an online marketplace that allows SMEs and MSMEs to easily build and maintain their own individual stores and have AI handle marketing, sales and customer support for them.

Hyloca is a subscription-based platform that not only provides all the features of ecommerce but also the ability for our sellers to promote their individual stores through our app, as web stores or even through their own social media accounts.

Based on our packages, we provide an array of tools to automate their marketing and productivity. Premium packages will also have our in-house team providing marketing support to promote store products. We also provide bots to our sellers to set up 24/7 customer support. The ability for stores to start their own reward programs allows sellers to grow and retain their customers. By allowing sellers to connect their social media accounts, we are enabling customers to buy through our app as well as by visiting the seller's individual web stores or just by chatting in their social media accounts.

We are working towards stream-lining our features to let AI handle marketing till sales for all our stores on the platform, provide 24/7 customer support and thus help them generate more sales.
Our top competitors would be Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Jio Mart etc. but they fail to provide the ability for their merchants to brand their own store.

Then there are the ecommerce support providers such as GoDaddy, Woocommerce, Magento etc. and other platforms such as Shopify, Ecwid, Shift4Shop etc. who provide individual ecommerce stores with marketing features. But as mentioned before, hosting and maintaining such stores for a small business is both costly and time-consuming. Also, availing features for digital marketing such as Hootsuite, Semrush, Agorapulse etc. is not affordable.

Hyloca enables small and medium-scale businesses to run their own branded ecommerce stores on web, social media or through our marketplace app where AI manages their marketing till sales process and provides customer support. Thus they do not need to worry about the hosting or managing of these stores. We also provide full-scale digital marketing support according to selected packages.

Our core team comprises Nandujith Prathap Jeetha, Visakh GS, Saneeth Sainudheen and Gokul SL. Nandujith and Visakh are both technical co-founders. 

Nandujith designs the system architecture and writes the backend of the application while Visakh GS works on frontend as well as the mobile apps. 

Saneeth provides Marketing and Strategy Development with his valuable expertise in the retail industry. He is also one of the Directors of Swisston which is one of the biggest toughened glass manufacturers in the Southern part of India as well as ‘Inside Story’ - the biggest interior showroom in the city of Thiruvananthapuram, India.

Gokul has over 3 years of experience in the accounting sector and looks into accounting and finance. He also is the co-owner of ‘Gokul Farms’, a sustainable and organic farming startup in the city of Thiruvananthapuram itself. Thus he also provides valuable insights into the current market trends and needs of the market concerning FMCG.  

With a core team possessing both technical and market expertise, we believe to be well-positioned in understanding and tackling this issue. 

We have also hired a team of two developers to support us in the development of the platform. We had also employed the resources of an outside firm in completing the digital marketing tools of Hyloca and had it later integrated to the AI as well as ecommerce features that were completed in-house by the end of Dec, 2022.

We have 6 active businesses who have subscribed on the platform since mid of January 2023. We have four active paying subscribers in which two are Base Subscribers paying 60$/Month and two are Premium Subscribers paying 185$/Month. Since our launch in January, we have generated revenue 120$ in January, 490$ in February, 490$ in March as well as 490$ in April. 

With the help of Solve, we hope to expand our market by creating partnerships in other regions and working with local communities in bringing our solution to their communities. This can lead to new income streams for these communities to grow and sustain themselves. We also hope to connect with investors who can help us move our technology to the next level.

Ecommerce is becoming a vital part of everyday commerce for every type of store with a growth-rate of over 15% in India and over 8% in the UAE. These figures are expected to grow at a rapid pace over the years as 95% of the purchases are expected to happen online by 2040. Online stores with a loud social media presence will get 32% more sales on average than those who do not.

However, small businesses are not capable of competing in this segment as they lack the capital and manpower to manage and market their own online stores. Most SMEs and MSMEs demand platforms that allow them to build stores in the easiest way possible, market them as individual stores in their own brand and also be able to expand as well as retain their customers with the features of an online marketplace. They require support in marketing their stores through their social media accounts, managing their online presence and providing customer support which are essential in growing sales.

Hyloca provides support in all these aspects with our ecommerce features, digital marketing tools and integration of AI. This is crucial in enabling our local SMEs and MSMEs to grow and compete their brands with the current major ecommerce platforms who are focused on taking over the online market share and fueling the sale of their preferred brands leading to loss of revenue for our local retailers.      

We intent to support 100 businesses on the platform in the first year and upto 5000 businesses by the end of fifth year enabling them to compete equally in the online market share. This will encourage more people to start small-scale sustainable businesses as well as stop big players from dominating the market and stealing the revenue.

We use the following metrics as a means of measure:

1. Monthly Active Subscribers
2. Monthly Active Customers
3. Monthly Orders per Store
4. Customer reward points collected per Store per Month
5. Monthly Active Affiliate Marketers
6. Subscription Revenue per Month
7. Platform Commission Revenue per Month

Ecommerce is becoming a vital part of everyday commerce for every type of store with a growth-rate of over 15% in India and over 8% in the UAE. These figures are expected to grow at a rapid pace over the years as 95% of the purchases are expected to happen online by 2040. Online stores with a loud social media presence will get 32% more sales on average than those who do not. We believe with Hyloca we can provide necessary support to new businesses in the online market space to grab more market share and generate revenue. We hope to enable such businesses compete with big players equally in the online market space. 

Hyloca enables small businesses to run their own branded ecommerce stores on web, social media or through our marketplace app where AI manages their marketing till sales process and provides customer support. Thus they do not need to worry about the hosting or managing of these stores. We also provide full-scale digital marketing support according to selected packages.

We not only encourage on building a diverse team but our framework is built to enable people from all communities with the ability to try their own new ventures by starting their own online stores in their region.   

Hyloca is a subscription-based platform that not only provides all the features of ecommerce but also the ability for our sellers to promote their individual stores through our app, as web stores or even through their own social media accounts.

Based on our packages, we provide an array of tools to automate their marketing and productivity. Premium packages will also have our in-house team providing marketing support to promote store products. We also provide bots to our sellers to set up 24/7 customer support. The ability for stores to start their own reward programs allows sellers to grow and retain their customers. By allowing sellers to connect their social media accounts, we are enabling customers to buy through our app as well as by visiting the seller's individual web stores or just by chatting in their social media accounts.

Our primary revenue will be from subscriptions to the platform which starts at just 100$ per month and premium packages going upto 400$ per Month. Apart from that we will also generate revenue from commission of 8% of every order placed through stores on the platform. Apart from that, we have an affiliate marketing program to bring in more customers and customer reward program to retain the customers. We are also working towards expanding our services to content creation, accounting, advertising etc. in the future which will bring in separate revenue streams. 

We have 6 active businesses who have subscribed on the platform since mid of January 2023. We have four active paying subscribers in which two are Base Subscribers paying 60$/Month and two are Premium Subscribers paying 185$/Month. Since our launch in January, we have generated revenue 120$ in January, 490$ in February and 490$ in March.