Startup Story- MoEngage/SaveZippy (A leading coupon network company)

Raviteja Dodda and Yashwanth kumar started their first venture together in 2009 when they were just 20. They were in their third year of college with a dream to be successful entrepreneurs, build an awesome company and influence the world. It was a marketing software that they built a platform to help event organizers co-ordinate and communicate. But no! It didn’t pan out that way. It made a little money, but eventually had to be shut down. “It didn’t scale, and we realized we couldn’t take it further,” recalls Raviteja. But the two classmates from IIT-Kharagpur’s 2006-10 computer science batch was determined not to give up. After working in two different companies for a few months post their graduation, the two got back together to start again this time a venture focused on developing cool mobile, social and location based products. SaveZippy one of the leading coupon networks in India, was their main product. “We managed to get between 100k and 200k downloads for SaveZippy. We were trying different strategies then, trying to get as many installs as possible. But somehow, we couldn’t engage our users. We knew it was not doing what we wanted it to do,” says Raviteja. It was then that he and Yashwanth took one of the most important decisions of their lives to ditch SaveZippy and move on. “We wanted to solve a global problem. And what we faced in SaveZippy was a global problem the struggle of app makers to engage users who have already downloaded their app. So we thought we would do a venture to help app makers tackle that problem,” Raviteja says. 

That was the genesis of their platform MoEngage, which they founded in July 2014. Raviteja says getting the first customer is always the biggest challenge for any startup. “Fortunately, we got TaxiForSure as a client in our initial days, which propelled our journey,” he says. 

MoEngage was also selected by Alchemist Accelerator, a Silicon Valley based accelerator dedicated to enterprise solutions. The venture received seed funding of $750,000 in 2014 itself, from Helion Venture Partners. In 2015, it raised $4.25 million in a Series A funding led by Helion. The platform continuously analyses smartphone users and the information is used to send periodic customized notifications to get users to use particular apps. MoEngage today has clients all over the world. His years of entrepreneurship have taught Raviteja a couple of important lessons. Do things lean, he says, and get to the market as soon as possible. “Second, get mentorship. Get ideas from experts, the best in the industry, and guide yourself to the right path,” he adds.