How This Startup is Helping Stores Take Baby Steps into World of Online Retail "The future of the startup is 'data analytics' and we aim to be the Nielsen of India," says Mohanty.

With increase in internet and smartphone penetration, eCommerce in India is growing at a very rapid pace and everyone wants to be the part of this online revolution.

Many startups are mushrooming to tap this exponentially growing space but when it comes to customer satisfaction and delivery process this space is left blank lacking behind startup at this point.

A regular online shopper in India is not experiencing the true benefits of the online-offline integration, as they don't get to discover all the options in their neighbourhood retail stores.

They are rather made to wait for days and the anxiety builds up over time and ultimately kills the joy of shopping because of inherent delays in delivery and bad customer service.

Inception:

To provide customers with real shopping experience, Ashis Mohanty, Surajit Nath and Benny Marianayagam, entrepreneurs based out of India and Canada have founded Nexhop with the singular aim of integrating the hyperlocal stores into the mainstream online eCommerce marketplace.

The idea struck them when three founders were in Toronto, Canada. Since the trio had been extensively shopping online in the Canadian market, they knew how easy and transparent the process was and their online shopping experience in India was equally challenging.

To turn their dream of an equal opportunity online marketplace, into action, Ashis moved back to India after quitting his high profile job in Toronto and started setting up the team to build and market the product to the Stores and that's how Nexhop was born.

"The dream is to build a company that supports the retail stores and builds an ecosystem exclusively for showcasing their inventory in an unbiased and neutral environment without any vested interest of online warehouses and wholesale dealers," said Ashis Mohanty, Founder, Nexhop.

This is how it works?

Startup works on a different model. Each sale made by the store helps them earn a loyal customer for life. The customer is not owned by Nexhop and is treated as a loyal customer of the store that made the sale to that user (very different from the current marketplace model where two parties don't even know each other).

"Nexhop's ideology and USP is to differentiate them from the regular online retailers who sell the products and earn a commission from the sale but ignore both the customer and the seller in the process," said Mohanty.

Also the store is added as a favorite of that customer and whenever the customer returns then they get preferential treatment from the store because of their existing relationship, courtesy of Nexhop.

"Nexhop maintains the order details and bills for every purchase, in the cloud. This is a huge value add to the customers who now don't need to worry about losing the receipt in the long run and miss an opportunity to track and claim the warranty in case something goes wrong," explained Mohanty.

What future holds for them?

The dream of building a brand name online and getting access to the same tools that are available to the big players of online retail has been well taken by the stores.

Nexhop has partnered with 80 stores in Bangalore and the conversion rate is a whopping 92 per cent. Currently the stores are adding 10-15 new customers every day and the initial beta of the Nexhop app has been tremendously successful.

"Our mission is to make every single store in India an online seller and help them utilize the true potential of the cloud and online as a channel for sales and marketing," said Benny, CTO, Nexhop

After its launch in December 15, the stores have experienced highly positive responses from the customers who appreciate the initiative and support the idea of enriching the community and supporting the neighbourhood stores to get more business and prosper.

"The future of the startup is "data analytics' and we aim to be the Nielsen of India," said Mohanty.

Nexhop is also looking at geographical expansion pan India and in North America through partnerships.

"We have a winning team and everyone of us has known each other for years now. With our global presence and technical strength we are building cutting edge software solutions and services that would be a game changer in the Indian online marketplace. Our strong team, clear focus and service oriented approach to build a level playing field for every retail store in India is at the core of Nexhop's mission and vision and we are working very hard to achieve this dream" said Nath, Co-founder, Nexhop.