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Open Talk @DSIM

An Interview with Vijaykrishna Ramanathan, Co-Founder at Codemojo.io

Codemojo is an end- to-end customer engagement suite for mobile apps & websites that lets them set up & run referral, loyalty, and gamification & rewards wallet services within 10 minutes.

Q1. Hi, Vijay. Welcome to DSIM. Tell our readers, how did you come up with the concept for ‘Codemojo.io’? Why did you think of calling the venture?
Ans. Thank you DSIM! Before Codemojo, we ran a similar model in the offline space enabling loyalty & CRM for Mom and Pop stores. When we felt there would be scaling issues in the model given, as in India 94% of retails are unorganized, we moved to the online space where we saw a perfect need for our solution. At one side we had notable startups that are struggling to keep their engagement level high and at the other end, we had large brick & motor enterprises moving into the online space to make a dent.
Mojo – Means Charm
Customer engagement is an art. You would be surprised to see how small things left unnoticed are reasons for customers to loose interest in your product or service.
Our Idea behind Codemojo is for the purpose that art, codes can be added to your existing website or app, to woo your customers. Hence the name Code- Mojo – Code that charms, was chosen.
Q2. Unique concept! What motivated you for this ‘out of the box’ idea? Who supported your idea in the beginning?
Ans. To avoid Customer Engagement is an expensive mistake for any company to make. Keeping the rapidly changing customer interest in products or services, we felt we needed to bring in stickiness through set of features like loyalty and gamification. This was our motivation for this idea, the need of the hour.
Reliance Retail was one of the early adopter of this service, they saw a lot of value in the idea matching up with their requirements.
Q3. Tell us Vijay, How do you advertise your business? What does digital marketing do for your business?
Ans. We use social media channels and forums to advertise our business. Digital marketing has been an essential component in establishing us a brand. We get at least two to three inbound calls a day, thanks to our constant presence in the digital space.
Q4. Great! What was technically the most challenging part of developing Codemojo?
Ans. Getting it rolled out in 3 months and field testing with a group of CIO and proving that the system is scalable. Once we had done that, it became smooth.
Q5. So, Vijay, if you had the knowledge you have now when starting the business, what would you have done differently?
Ans. I would have proceeded purely as a large enterprise solution with more customizations. We feel that lots of small and medium companies are not prepped to take customer engagement seriously. In our initial days, we felt it was not prior, but in reality it makes  a great difference.
Q6. As there is stiff competition in the market for startups, how one should look for the growth?
Ans. Keep Evolving, Keep Innovating. These two are like pulse and heartbeat. They can’t be lower than what you start with.
Q7. Vijay, Have you picked up any tips from other startup founders?
Ans. Have a Never say die attitude from Vijay Shekar Sharma – Paytm, Go Global with a bang like Girish Mathrobootham of Freshdesk, and a lot influenced us in many parts of our startup lives.
Q8. Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?
Ans. Flock for official internal communication and IM. Trello for reminders & deadlines, Hubspot for sales, Freshsales for CRM, One note as a digital diary, and many more …
Q9. Vijay, Share a quote that inspires you the most?
Ans. “Forget about your competitors, Focus on your customer” -Jack Ma
This is absolutely true for both, brand and clients.
Q10. Finally, at the end of our interesting conversation, what advice would you offer to any soon to become startup founders out there?
Ans. Your idea need not to be perfect; you just need a good start, by good start I mean a Co-Founder who is always there to handle the highs and lows, a core team that stands by you. To top it, ensure you are flexible to innovate along with the way. The more rigid you are the harder you fall one day or the other.
Thank you so much Vijay for your time. DSIM wishes you best of luck for your future. Keep inspiring and keep motivating.
DSIM Team
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