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12/4/2017 Neither Google nor Facebook: Israel's Seemba is bringing India's small businesses online Quartz

India

MAPPED AND MORE

Neither Google nor Facebook:


An Israeli startup is bringing
Indias small businesses online
Ananya Bhattacharya December 03, 2017 Quartz India

A whole new world online. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)

Millions of Indian mom-and-pop stores may be getting a technology leg-up


from an unexpected corner.

Launched by Silicon Valleys Singularity University alumniAsaf Kindler, Vito


Margiotta, Gabriel Gurovich, and Alberto IoreSeemba is a mobile phone-based
platform that helps businesses build their websites. The company has been

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12/4/2017 Neither Google nor Facebook: Israel's Seemba is bringing India's small businesses online Quartz

operating in India since May 2017, focusing on giving the countrys estimated 51
million kirana stores an online identity through a website.

Some 50,000 merchants have already installed the app on their phones. Of these,
Seemba says, 70% werent even on Google Maps or Facebook, let alone having
their own website.

If your store doesnt have an online presence, youre losing out, said Kindler.
All the clients are coming online. Everyone in India now has an Aadhaar card
and millions have Paytm accounts.

Much of Seembas expansion in India has come on the back of its partnership
with the Maharashtra government for the Bring Maharashtra Online programme.
To help local businesses migrate towards a digital and cashless future, it has
roped in over 1,000 college students in Pune to go knocking door-to-door and
give small-business owners a crash course in using Seemba.

A Seemba ambassador in Pune on-boarding owners of a local cafe. (Seemba)

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12/4/2017 Neither Google nor Facebook: Israel's Seemba is bringing India's small businesses online Quartz

Why India?

In 2014, the Seemba founding team researched a number of emerging economies


in Latin America, Africa, and Asia to identify their ideal marketone with a
sizable middle class, plenty of of ine businesses, and a willingness to adopt new
technologies.

India led on all fronts, Kindler said. The next billion users in the country are
leapfrogging desktops and coming online using mobile phones. The
governments digital push is also helping startups move much faster (to reach)
the market, he added.

Cataloguing all the mom-and-pop stores isnt easy, but competition is limited.
One business to reckon with is Hyderabad-based NowFloats, but with hefty price
tags ranging from Rs25,000 ($388) to Rs1.35 lakh($2,098), it caters to a very
different market. Seemba, on the other hand, creates a website at no cost and
charges a monthly $5 fee for added services such as Facebook marketing.

How it works

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12/4/2017 Neither Google nor Facebook: Israel's Seemba is bringing India's small businesses online Quartz

Setting up the site. (Seemba)

Seembas app opens with a questionnaire about the business: name, address,
opening hours, etc. It also asks shop-owners to upload images of their products.
Electrcity bill, PAN card, VAT number, or proof of being registered under the
Shop Act are then used for veri cation.

Seemba then generates a webpage carrying all this information, and each
business is assigned a unique URL.

Once the page goes live, the app becomes a dashboard to manage the businesss
digital footprint. A chatbot asks more questions so the arti cial intelligence (AI)
platform can determine if more images are needed, or if bank account or Paytm
details, among other things, need to be shared. An in-built smart assistant helps
entrepreneurs secure loans, nd suppliers in their area, or get insurance.

To widen their reach, Seemba also puts businesses on Facebook Places, Google
Maps, and other local aggregators for a small fee. We see it as a complementary
tool to (Facebook and Google), said Kindler. We want to be the hubwhere you
can manage all your online activity.

The 300 kilobyte (Kb) app is tailor-made for developing markets as it even
performs on low-end devices with 2G connections. Besides English, Seemba is
also available in Hindi and Marathi (Spanish is also an option since its global
launch in August).
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12/4/2017 Neither Google nor Facebook: Israel's Seemba is bringing India's small businesses online Quartz

Backed by marquee investors Cornerstone Venture Partners, Guggenheim


Partners, and Italian Angels For Growth, Seemba generates revenue from an
array of paid services like the chat interface to interact with customers and
personalised online and SMS campaigns. The company eventually wants to
partner with payment apps like Paytm to convert its web traf c into actual
transactions.

Alongside the freemium modelcomprising the free website and paid services
Seemba also makes money by sharing data about businesses with third-party
players like governments and telcos. But bringing Indian merchants online
doesnt guarantee revenue streams. To really move the needle, Seemba needs
customers to discover these businesses on its platform.

Blurred vision?

Theyre looking from the supply-side to on-board storesbut how will they
bring customers (to the businesses)? Shubham Anand, head of retail-consumer
packaged goods at RedSeer Consulting, told Quartz. The competition is already
offering something extraFor search, theres JustDial or Google. For deal
discovery, there are Nearbuy, Little, and Magic Pin. To transact, people will go to
Amazon and Flipkart.

Anand is also sceptical about Seemba selling data to government and private
entities. Its a very infrastructure-heavy business model, he said.

Its also dif cult to assess how many merchants are truly bene ting. Quartz tried
to connect with over 15 Indian merchants listed on Seemba but got through to
only threetwo of whom havent used it since downloading. Seemba marks that
up to a literacy issue. We probably need to guide them on how to use the app,
Kindler said.

Event organiser 79 Entertainment Celebration in Dahisar, Mumbai, is a user, but


when Quartz spoke to its 29-year-old owner Chirag Labde, he said, Videos dont
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12/4/2017 Neither Google nor Facebook: Israel's Seemba is bringing India's small businesses online Quartz

upload here, so its not useful for me. I use my Facebook page or a website I
designed myself instead.

Features like video were consciously left out of Seemba as a majority of its
clients are product-based stores. Having a website in the rst place is like going
from zero to one. But if its simple enough, people already want the next thing,
Kindler said. Were starting with the bare minimum possible and then
integrating third-party features.

Over the next year, Seemba wants to bring two million Indian businesses online,
mainly in Maharashtra. Five years on, it hopes to penetrate at least 10 states on-
the-ground. How exactly it intends to boost real-world activity for these
businesses seems like another puzzle that Seemba is yet to crack.

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