With more than 65 million consumers expected to transact through mobile devices in 2015, the demand for hyperlocal delivery is skyrocketing.  Due to the rise of Internet users, the surge in payment options, and the proliferation of GPS -enabled devices and suitable demographics, there’s been a tangible growth in the number of hyperlocal startups, in the recent years. These businesses help consumers discover products and offers in their neighborhood through mobile platforms, and even make the final purchase without going to the store.

About 11% of all e-commerce sales are through mobile devices. Considering the rise in mobile transactions, which are the new areas where Hyperlocal model can be brought in? As the service market is fragmented, how do you make associations and partnerships with such service providers? How do you scale the hyperlocal model, considering it needs to be available where the customer is located? The October 2015 edition of Startup Saturday Bangalore on the theme ‘The Age of Hyperlocal Products’, brought together successful entrepreneurs and industry experts, to discuss these and many other questions related to the Hyperlocal businesses.

The event started with a demo by Basavaraj Hampali, Co-founder of PracticalCoding.in. The startup is a mentor-based personalized code learning platform that helps professionals learn from experienced programmers. Mentors are from industry, with over 5 years of practical experience working in the technology that they teach at PracticalCoding. The courses currently offered are iOS application development, android development, web application development, and mobile game development.

The second demo of the day was by Surendra Shahi, Founder of Streetappy. Streetappy is a mobile application for making car pooling simpler and safer. The application focuses on building a platform that provides commuters with high privacy, effective co-passenger matching and travel safety during ride sharing.

The third demo was by the founder of Pillocate, a startup that provides efficient and quick delivery of medicines and other health-related products. Pillocate allows consumers to check real-time availability of medicines in the nearby medical stores.

 The three demos were followed by the most awaited session of the event – the Panel Discussion moderated by Rohith Veerajappa (Co-founder, Wow Labz) and featuring panel speakers: Mohit Agrawal (Growth, Roadrunnr), Karthik Vidyanathan ( Co-Founder at Momoe) , Mayank Kumar (Co-Founder at Opinio) , Saurabh Kumar (Co-Founder at Solvify) and Rohit Bhat (Vice President at Sequoia Capital). Below are some of the insights shared by the panelists about the burgeoning Hyperlocal space:

• India is ready for hyperlocal businesses, including the tier-2 and tier-3 cities
• We are seeing the trend of hyperlocal in every company because of on-demand services and productivity gains.
• The cashless payment mode is gaining popularity, with the convenience that it offers, and with the growing trust of consumers in online/mobile payments.
• Bringing businesses/merchants online is challenging owing to the non-tech savvy owners.
• Supporting multiple languages for better user experience is one of the challenges that hyperlocal businesses deal with, especially in metropolitan cities where the users speak various languages.
• The service quality of the business will determine if the customers use the application multiple times or not.
• The best ways of marketing hyperlocal businesses are through Facebook ads, physical ads at nearby stores, word of mouth marketing, and vendor referrals
• To ensure user loyalty, build a hyperlocal business that offers great product experience and excellent service quality

The October 2015 edition of Startup Saturday Bangalore was attended by 250+ people that included a mix of entrepreneurs, early-stage startups, software developers, students, and marketing consultants. In addition to the talks and demos, the event also had stalls of various interesting startups such as F5 Escapes, Bucketkart.com, Kloudkitchen.com, Styl, Multi Recruit, and Fexfree.com  at the venue. A huge thank you to the amazing audience who attended and participated actively in the event; and to our long list of event partners: MediaTek Labs, IBM Bluemix, Bangalore Alpha Labs, TiE Bangalore, Wow Labz and Yourstory, amongst others, for their generous support and contribution.

If you missed attending this Startup Saturday, then make sure you block your calendar for the next event  happening on 21st of November. Jointly presented by Headstart Network and Villgro, the November edition of Startup Saturday Bangalore will be part of ‘The Social Enterprise Summit’ and will bring together various other players in the social enterprise space. If you an aspiring social entrepreneur or someone who is running a social enterprise, then the event will provide you with an opportunity to pitch your business idea, find co-founders, discover funding options, network with like-minded peers and get loads of inspiration for starting up and building an impact-driven business. For more updates on next month’s event, check out the Startup Saturday Bangalore Facebook page.

 About Headstart Bangalore:

Established in the year 2008 with the vision to ‘Change the World through Entrepreneurship’, Headstart Network Foundation (headstart.in) is the largest network of early stage startups in India. A non-profit, volunteer-driven organization, HeadStart Bangalore facilitates entrepreneurial learning, hiring and peer mentoring amongst the startups and addresses their issues through various initiatives such as: Startup Saturday Bangalore, Headstart Clubs, Headstart Higher, Headstart Cofounder Search Program and Headstart Inturn.

Written by Apoorva Pandey, Edited by Swati Ramnath