About the Platform

Wooplr is a ‘product discovery’ platform for food, fashion and decor. It helps you discover trends and more in fashion, decor and food, based on your location, interests, occasion and social circle. Anone can recommend your favorite shopping finds and dishes using photos and see what others have recommended.

Wooplr is available on the web, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. The Wooplr website and the mobile apps are a fantastic visual guide to help one decide what to buy, where to shop and where to eat.

Wooplr is a Bangalore-based startup founded in 2012 by four ex-McAfee employees – more on them can be got from www.wooplr.com/about.

Whom do we cater to?

Wooplr is for all who those like to follow fashion, food and décor. Wooplr gets the user to know where they can shop from locally. The user group on Wooplr is between the age-group of 16-30. But then, who doesn’t love to go out and shop?

What do we offer to our consumers?

Looking for new things to find/buy or visiting a new location - Wooplr brings on the mobile the ease/speed to find things based on your location and current need along with what is trending (being followed the most). What can be more convenient?

Say, you are in a location and feel like munching on a ‘burger’. You can Woop it and you will get multiple choices of burgers in and around you, or say you would like to buy ‘indigo colour shoes with spikes’ – Woop it again!

Or suppose, you know you are good at ‘shopping finds’ and have knowledge about food – you can use Wooplr to influence others and have people follow you. Yes, Wooplr is the easiest way to not only find but also share your favourite fashion, décor and food recommendations.

There is too much on Wooplr to find out on a daily basis. Ideally before a person steps out for either shopping or to eat out, we expect them to check out the Wooplr app first!

What motivated us to start up?

We wanted to give people a new way to discover their city. The idea came from the pain-points we experience every day. We have always wanted certain answers:

•  How do we find out about those new products we want but can’t seem to find?
•  Where are the best shops in the city to buy things I like and want?
•  What is most popular dish at a restaurant we are trying out for the first time?

We are limited to what our friends know. And we can’t change our friend circles to find out more about shopping – however we can follow those who know and can help out with their suggestions.

Also shopping - by nature - is inherently social. We would like to know what are our friends are buying. And where they are buying it from. Shopping is meant to be fun. We like to go shopping with friends, try out new clothes and shoes, ask them for their advice.

The joy and sociability of shopping was missing. We just wanted to bring that back!

What's in a name?

It is derived from the word Woop / Woople which as per the urban dictionary means "a shout of extreme happiness (sic)" which we thought was quite catchy and very relevant to the emotion that is associated with shopping.

There's more on how we came about the name in this blog post - What does Wooplr mean?

 How do we see Social Media?

Social Media today is more of talk and less of action. Look at the innumerable sharing about various social/political/economical issues that just end up remaining discussions. That said, Social Media is powerful in disseminating information. This needs to be made more actionable and accessible.

Currently we are....

Wooplr has 35,000 registered users across Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi . Over 200,000 shoppers have benefited from Wooplr so far. We have had over 10,000 app downloads in the past 3 months from Android, iOS and Windows Phone (January 2014). The gender ratio (F/M is 60:40);  the active users are mostly women. Our milestones thus far:

•  March 2013 : Launched Public Beta in Bangalore
• April 2013 – Hired our first employee
•  July 2013 – Hired our first Engineer
•  Aug 2013 : Launched Android App
• October 2013: Launched Windows Mobile App
• Oct 2013: Organically growing to Mumbai/Delhi
•  November 2103: hit 20,000 registered users , 100,000 shoppers benefitted from Wooplr .
•  January 2014 : hit 35,000 registered users . Wooplr users in six cities of India – Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune , Kolkata, Hyderabad
• Jan 2104 : 200,000 shoppers benefitted from Wooplr
•  Jan 2014 : Launched Native iOS ( Iphone) app

Our biggest challenge was..

Our challenge is to get brands to believe that social media marketing can show them immediate ROI. Brands have made huge investments in other social media channels where they have received no returns. Getting a ‘million likes’ makes no sense. What we give to the brands is what they have been seeking –  to ‘know their customers’ and ‘to interact with them’.

On the consumer front, we are good; we know that once on Wooplr the user is hooked on to it. We need to take Wooplr to more users in the coming months.

We want to dominate the world by..

Wooplr seeks to be the ‘goto’ social media platform when someone steps out of home and wants to shop from local stores around them in fashion, décor and food categories. Wooplr solves the basic need of product discovery, which is valid in Bangalore or Boston.

We’re making moolah by...

The monetization plan will only kick in later. For now we are focused on improving user experience and increasing the user base.

Our What The **** Moment

In our early days, we would meet people to get our ideas validated. Our second pitch meeting was with a known restaurateur in Bangalore. We had walked into his newly opened pub and asked to see the proprietor. He agreed to meet us, had one look at our card and said, “I’ll give you both five minutes. If I don’t like what I hear, I'll kick you guys out.” Time was ticking and we started our pitch. As time went on, he warmed up to our idea and twenty minutes later, he said, “Alright, I was sleeping until now. Start over.”

Harrowing as it may have been, it was one of the most important discussions we have had. The restaurant owner shared that he did like the ‘recommendations part’ and that we should focus on that more. And now, it is Wooplr's core feature.

Industry as we foresee

Indian social media industry is just getting started. Businesses, both big and small, are realizing the potential of it. Also, the social media revolution started with Facebook, but as users evolve, people will start embracing more focused, personalized vertical social media channels.

Lastly, Are you hiring?

Yes, we are! Looking for self motivated and creative people.