They are buzzing -they are Easebuzz!

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"Reaching the right prospects was no more an issue. I was making enough money by selling my products online and this was possible without having to worry about online infrastructure, digital payment, online promotions or even security related issues! Easebuzz gave me the platform and support for becoming an online seller!" exclaims an excited and satisfied client of Easebuzz.

Easebuzz is an online digital solution provider that allows small and medium businesses to not only have a digital shop, list their products and transact online with ease, but also leverage their business with effective digital marketing and hard to resist offers. Riding the digital wave are Rohit Prasad and Vikram Kumar the technocrats behind Easebuzz. The young and enterprising duo are nothing like each other. Kumar is an ever-smiling optimist while Prasad is the serious brooding one. Together they are a perfect blend of enthusiasm and maturity, a rare combination in the start-up world!

Both Kumar and Prasad are engineers, but they met for the first time during their b-school stint and soon built a healthy work relationship. As business management graduates from Symbiosis Centre for Information Technology (SCIT) Pune, Kumar and Prasad started small, working on digital marketing projects while still at b-school over 5 years ago and were encouraged and supported by Dr Raman, the Ex-Director of SCIT who is presently heading SIBM, Pune. However, ideation for Easebuzz did not begin until mid-2013. About a year and half was spent in meticulously developing a service that even as of today, has very few competitors in the market. Up and running for a year now, Easebuzz has grown from merely 6 traders to over 5000 happy clients. "Every month we are growing at 50% more transaction value", pips in Prasad with his customary nod! Converted into sheer numbers, this translates into a whopping growth rate of 83233.33%. Easebuzz is at an opportune moment today. With demonetization taking the nation by storm, small traders and freelancers who earlier transacted on pure cash basis, are forced to go digital. Easebuzz offers such traders a platform for a digital shop and transaction just like any established brand. Easebuzz also offers an easy to use payment gateway solution for merchants who can plug and play solution on their website.

Started as a solution for freelancers and small and medium business (SMB), Easebuzz today, has a diversified portfolio of clientele - ranging from SMBs with no physical presence to small merchants and traders operating out of stand-alone stores, to event managers looking at promoting their event and even education institutions requiring a digital presence with payment gateway solution. In the line of promotions Easebuzz also offers 50% cash back in the form of coupons; a value proposition most traders are flocking towards. Apart from the fact that they can showcase their products/services at very low costs, they are able to offer their customers lucrative cash back offers on every purchase. Kumar is excited when he says "Our business is unique because it allows traders to ‘go live’ within 5 minutes. At an extremely low cost we provide our clients with digital presence, 24*7 support, over 5 wallets and 90+ net banking options, 50% cash back in the form of coupons and an opportunity to co-brand and cross sell." If you think they have it all, then think again! What Easebuzz offers today is only the tip of the iceberg. "There is so much more we would like to offer to our clients and loyal customers, however we want to test the waters before we go full throttle," says the ever-cautious Prasad.

You can get an idea of their work ethics with this simple anecdote they smilingly share. Recently the young duo’s maiden venture SRV Media Pvt. Ltd. featured in the top 50 list of Google Partner’s Game On International Contest. What they earned was an all-expense paid trip to San Francisco for the Google Partner Summit, an opportunity of a lifetime for the young entrepreneurs. When quizzed on their experience at the summit, they admitted that they gave it a skip. Their reason was simply – "work comes before all else!" - they had pressing work commitments and hence gave work priority over an all paid trip to San Francisco by Google!

In a world of venture capitalists and seed funders, Easebuzz has been bootstrapping for finances. Their ability to put their money where their mouth is, talks about their conviction in the business. "I am pitching to 5000 sellers now. Considering that there are 433 million SMB’s in India right now, growing at a CAGR of 15%, the market is wide open for a service like ours. If I can cater to even 1% of this market, I will be a billion-dollar company!" foresees Prasad. Having said that, they realize that to grow into a global company to reckon with, they must strengthen their IT team, add on more ‘push’ to their sales and marketing team and build a strong legal and support team. For all this they will have to attract financiers. Lucrative as their business is, there should be no dearth of funders. Venture capitalists and HNIs - are you listening?!

Rohit Prasad Business head for Easebuzz