OnePlus Expands its Offline Footprint with Third Experience Store Launch in Pune

OnePlus, the global premium smartphone maker, has expanded its presence in Pune, with the launch of their third experience store today at Elpro City Square Mall, Chinchwad, Pune. Spread over 3000 sq. ft., the state-of-the-art Experience Store is also equipped with a service centre and the celebrated OnePlus coffee experience, making it a one-of-a-kind premium retail experience for all customers in the city.

Karisma Kapoor launched OnePlus store at Elpro City Square mall

Leveraging the brand’s resounding success in Pune market, the new store is part of its ongoing endeavor to enhance its offline presence and create additional retail touchpoints for users to physically engage with the brand on a more intimate level. The ongoing offline growth also ties into the brand’s vision of making India OnePlus’ second global headquarters.



Addressing the new OnePlus Experience Store launch, Abhimanyu Kumar, Manager, Exclusive Retail, OnePlus India said, “At OnePlus, we are committed to providing our customers with an end-to-end premium experience and OnePlus Experience Stores are a significant part of this initiative. We are very excited to expand our presence in Pune with our largest store yet and look forward to catering to our growing OnePlus community based here.”

Marking the occasion, Deepak Kumar Chairman & MD, Elpro International Ltd. Shared, “Elpro has strived to transform Pimpri-Chinchwad area and contribute immensely to its development. We are happy to welcome OnePlus and bring one of the most loved smartphone brands in the country and city to this locality. With the inauguration of this new experience store, we are confident that shoppers would be thrilled to visit the mall frequently to shop one of their favourite smart tech brands and we look forward to continuing our fruitful partnership with OnePlus for years to come.”

Popular Bollywood actor Karisma Kapoor was also present at the launch and said, “Being a tech lover myself, it gives me great pleasure to be associated with OnePlus which is known for its passion towards driving innovation in technology. The brand has indeed set new benchmarks when it comes to connecting with its users, and I am thrilled to be a part of their journey as they further their offline engagement. OnePlus fans will surely love this new Experience Centre in Pune - a city which has always been close to my heart.”

Customers can avail the following offers at the new OnePlus Experience Store

Instant discount up to INR 3000 on HDFC bank cards transactions when customers buy OnePlus 7T Series - Valid till 31 December 2019

No Cost EMI for 3 months on purchase of a 7 Pro or any 7T series device (Only on credit cards) - Valid till 30 November 2019. First 20 buyers will get OnePlus Travel Backpack

21st to 50th buyers will get Wireless Bullet Version 1

51st to 100th buyers will get OnePlus Exclusive Goodies (OnePlus Never Settle T-shirt)

OnePlus 7 Pro back case for free to 50 first customers (who have the OnePlus 7 Pro).

OnePlus is currently present in over 2000 offline stores across India. With the global tech brand leading the premium Indian smartphone market, it is now looking forward to operating 100 new OnePlus Experience Stores across top 50 cities by the year 2020.

Flipkart Debuts its Offline Market Entry with Furniture Experience Centre in Bengaluru

Flipkart Sunday announced its foray into the offline space with its decision to set up first Furniture Experience Centre in Bengaluru.

Spread across nearly 1,800 square feet, Flipkart would offer a touch and feel experience to customers in the fast-evolving online furniture market, the e-commerce major said in a statement.

According to the company, this is a step towards helping customers understand the vast selection of furniture offered by Flipkart and increase awareness around the seamless buying and installation experience it offers.

Flipkart Vice-President (Furniture, Electronics and Private Label) Adarsh Menon said, "As a customer-focused organisation, we understand the requirements of customers and hence 'FurniSure'. The idea behind the FurniSure Experience Zone is to allow customers to explore Flipkart Furniture's offerings in a new and innovative fashion."

Flipkart is also working with Google to enhance customers' overall viewing experience at these FurniSure Experience Centres through integration with Google Lens.

Visitors at the experience centre can use their smartphone to scan the Flipkart Furniture icon at the experience centres, which will then route them to the platform's furniture page, allowing them to explore the product catalogue along with their various features. PTI KRH

Gurugram-based O2O Platform MagicPin Raises $20 Mn from Lightspeed US

Gurgaon-based Online-to-Offline (O2O) services platform MagicPin, has raised about $20 million (Rs 141 crore) in Series C round of funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners US. The startup had raised debt financing of about $1 million in March this year.

Post this fresh funding, the total funding raised by Magicpin is now $31 million. The startup is now valued at an estimated $100 million, reported Economic Times.

The latest round closed last month with participation from existing backer Lightspeed India Partners, the domestic franchise of the Menlo Park-based venture capital firm, and WaterBridge Ventures.

Jeremy Liew and Ravi Mhatre, who are partners at Lightspeed US, will come on board of MagicPin. The startup, which allows users and merchants in a locality to discover, interact, and transact, is perhaps the largest platform driving business to offline retailers and brands in the country, according to Anshoo Sharma, chief executive officer of MagicPin.

The funding came after a long gap of 18 months since the startup has raised $7 million from Lightspeed India and WaterBridge Ventures, in May last year.

Founded in 2015 by Anshoo Sharma and Brij Bhushan, Magicpin drives local discovery that leads to business for local retailers across categories likes restaurant, fashion, beauty, grocery, spa, yoga, gyms, and more. Prior to founding Magicpin, sharma was at Lightspeed India, while Brij Bhushan was at Nexus Venture Partners.

Magicpin platform has more than 800,000 listed merchants ranging from local kirana stores to big box retailers and established consumer brands such as McDonald’s, FabIndia and Hard Rock Cafe.

“We see the business that we are in as a business to drive revenue to offline retailers and brands. That, we believe, is an underserved market where there are much, much bigger opportunities than the ecommerce space,” Sharma said.

According to the CEO, the company will record gross transactions of Rs 200 crore in November, with close to 2 million monthly transactions being driven on the platform. It is currently operational in 12 cities across the country.

According the startup's Linkedin profile, Magicpin has grown 5x in 2018 and is by far the leader in offline marketing for retailers in India.

The company competes with Alibaba Group and SoftBank-backed Paytm Mall, which claimed that its discovery platform contributes 30% of revenue.

Lightspeed in India has backed some of the country’s biggest internet startups, including OYO Hotels & Homes, ed-tech venture Byju’s and B2B online marketplace Udaan. The three ventures are now valued at over $1 billion each, following their most recent funding rounds.

Magicpin has 5 Million+ users and is now live in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Goa, Chennai, Ahmedabad and is quickly spreading to more cities and countries.

Muses Launches an Innovative Product in Offline Marketing Space

Muses Marketing Private Limited recently announced the release of their new product like service which helps start-ups and new companies reach out to their target audience in various locations like Corporates, Housing Societies etc. in an affordable manner. The product lets start-ups co-promote their brand with other start-ups by sharing the overall costs, making BTL activations extremely affordable.

“This is a strategically decided step in our goal to automate the offline marketing. The co-promotion methodology helps start-ups share the cost of activity and the result are similar therefore decreasing the cost per lead. This also lets start-ups do more activities in the same marketing budget making the use of funds more usable. This is redefining today’s market,” said Divij Goyal, Co-founder of AdOnStream Services which was recently acquired by Muses Marketing. Mr Goyal is working in the core team of Muses Marketing.

For the first time ever, startups can enjoy affordable BTL Activations and can reach their TG without spending much. “The cost of this has been decided in such a way that it remains under INR 5,000 per activity which earlier used to be more than INR 20,000,” said Vyom Garg, Chief Operations Officer, Muses Marketing.

Muses Marketing equipped the BTL Activations domain with technology giving live video broadcast from the activity so that the founders can supervise the activity from their office and concentrate on more important things. “Coming from the startup background and bootstrapping Muses, it has always been a pleasure to serve startups and help them make use of our experience and learnings. We understand how important marketing is and that’s precisely why we designed this product. It has the capability to cut down the excessive marketing costs hence dropping the customer acquisition cost significantly. We believe this can be a perfect counter move to the difficulties being faced by start-ups in the present year.” commented Ronak Singh Ahuja, co-founder, Muses Marketing.

Muses claims it has tied up with 100+ Corporates in the past 3 months so as to find the right target audience for every start-up. The product has already generated quite some interest from a variety of start-ups including 1mg and Zimmber. The first group of start-ups is about to be rolled out soon by Muses.