Tricity Stars: The best ‘deal’ in town

If you ever happen to take a sneak peek into the playbook of Sameer Sharma, you would know how he has cracked the code to sustainable success in his 14-year long career by staying connected to the roots and ‘being local’.

Today, as the world is hailing hyperlocal business models as the next big thing, Sharma, who had already harnessed the power of local with his first startup Trideal way back in 2012, smiles. Tricity’s very own exclusive deals website, Trideal was acquired by Paytm’s Littleapp in 2015 and merged with Nearby, another deals platform acquired by Paytm, in 2017.

After his stint as vice-president (marketing) at Littleapp, Bengaluru and heading a team under Paytm mall, Noida, Sharma relocated to Chandigarh for his second startup innings – he co-founded Shoutlo, a local content and deals discovery platform, with his wife Abhilasha Sidana, and Uengage, a SaaS (Software as a Service) company that builds technology for small and medium businesses.

Sharma’s mission of staying hyperlocal, curating best deals and recommendations in the online to offline space and empowering the local consumer business has been a pathbreaking model in Chandigarh.

With the sole purpose of making something from and for this region, Sharma bootstrapped his second startup, Uengage in 2018. A B2B technology company, it makes no-code, commission-free apps for a monthly subscription for local consumer business.

But why make exclusive apps for F&B industry when there are giants like Zomato and Swiggy? “Why give unimaginable growing power to just two players? Zomato has a 10 crore customer base, how does it impact your business? You are not going to order a biryani from Hyderabad, you will order from a local, nearby vendor!”

“Apps like Zomato and Swiggy came in in 2015 at 5 per cent commission. We told merchants the commissions will shoot up, some believed, some shrugged it off. It has shot up to 28 per cent now, and if they decide to merge in the future, it will cross 35 per cent. It’s a huge price for restaurant owners, who have high expenses, low revenue, and zero access to customer data,” says Sharma.

Post-Covid, local businesses want to increase their digital footprint, especially in tier-2 and 3 cities but high costs listed by IT companies, that too in dollars, discourage them from developing their own tech. It is a problem Uengage solves – from app, website, delivery management, SMS integration to digital marketing and payment gateway integration, and customer data, they are providing the entire package, thereby helping local companies increase their reach, reduce wastage and strengthen their brand.

Success stories are playing out – La Pinoz pizza, a homegrown brand today has 1.8 million downloads across 300 outlets, 27 per cent of its revenue comes from commission-free apps. From Uncle Jacks, Katani Sweets, Bhena Da Dhabha, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to Canadian Pizza, Tossin Pizza, Petu Pankaj, Chitkara University, Uengage has 1,000-plus local businesses as its clients.

“Our collective aim is to create wealth and value on a long-term basis, to be invested in a consistent problem-solving model, and to build a sustainable revenue stream.”

Destiny’s child

It is the carefree comforting memory of his hometown Dinanagar in Gurdaspur and the charm of Chandigarh that acts as a magnet for 36-year-old Sharma, who carries with him an earthy connection, sound sensibility, humility and values of educationist parents. “I belong to a middle-class family whose sole purpose in life is to provide quality education to their children,” shares Sharma, who did his B.Tech in Computer Science in 2003 from Chitkara. “That was the moment I realised Chandigarh is the city I want to be in.”

Although a computer science engineer, he gave Infosys and Tech Mahindra a miss because he did not want to do coding, and joined HCL in Noida. One of the reasons he took up the job was to pay off the education loan and avoid coding. But destiny had other plans. HCL asked him to code. The process of self-learning began, his interest in coding developed, and HCL deployed him on site in Bay Area, California in 2008. Facebook, Android, Apple …there was a strong internet culture there, and it spiked his appetite for tech.

By 23, Sharma had two stints in the US, saved, paid off the loan, quit HCL in 2011, and chased his entrepreneurial dream by registering his start-up in Delhi, a deals platform called DitchMRP. It was a deal-breaker. “Because a 24-year-old youth is aspirational, he or she wants to go out but save money too, so why not save it for them,” he says.

“Restaurants have lean hours, peak times, seasons, rentals, bills, salaries, overhead costs, perishable items – merchants have a stronger reason to be in the deal.”

Fate intervened yet again – around the same time, his mentors, Dr Ashok Chitkara and Mohit Chitkara were exploring a similar concept and asked Sharma to join them. Two more cofounders – Kaushik Mukherjee and Kabir Khanna – came on board and Trideal began business in 2012.

Within the first six months, two co-founders exited. Left with a four-member team, Sharma decided to give it a go. The next six months were critical – from just writing the code, he was given an entire business to run. There were multiple challenges, sleepless nights and endless meetings with merchants. His optimistic and friendly nature helped, and Sharma took Trideal to another level by becoming one of the very first mobile apps in the city. “We even came out with a local Trideal e-wallet and recharge to speed up payments and build trust with customers.”

The highs and lows

The biggest high was when Paytm acquired Trideal but the biggest low was when it was merged with Littleapp and Nearby and his company got dissolved.

Working on the Punjab government’s COVA essential delivery voluntarily during the Covid-19 pandemic was gratifying, for Sharma.

The ability to take risks, learn and help are his qualities but what differentiates Sharma has been his commitment to being ‘hyperlocal’.

“We survived because it was never a tech play for us. It was a merchant-relation play. The exclusivity of who is working with you, who has a deal with you.”

Going forward, Sharma wants to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit amongst youth and open Uengage offices in Punjab – “We need to make our small cities self-sufficient and stop this erosion of brains and money to other countries.” In Chandigarh, less traffic and more digitalisation are his wishes.