Exclusive | Our journey in India is exciting: PAYBACK's Vijay Bobba

Customer loyalty programmes are the in-thing and most of us have benefitted from it be it at the time of buying from a big shopping mall or a retailer or  spending by credit cards. One such customer loyalty programme is PAYBACK. It is the largest organised multi-partner loyalty programs that has been making inroads in the India since its foray here. PAYBACK is India’s first loyalty program wherein customers can redeem points on every purchase made from different brands using a single card. PAYBACK partners mostly with  market leaders in consumer segment and have more than  10 offline and 50 online partners.  With around 30 million registered user base in India  it is the largest platform for real time redemption in India. Recently Adgully has a chance to interact with the CEO and Managing Director of PAYBACK, Vijay Bobba on various aspects regarding the company and its plans, Following is the interview from the meeting. 

 

 

Vijay Bobba (VB): Our journey so far has been exciting. We are currently the largest multi-partner loyalty program in India, with over 3000 point of sales. The Indian market has its own set of challenges. We started out with a vision to establish the company as a market leader and six years down the line we have managed to educate our customers with our unique value propositions and thereby established a strong brand identity for the program.

 

 

VB: The Indian market is still nascent stage in comparison to the developed countries such as Germany, where we are the market leaders. As I said, the market is full of challenges, as most Indian consumers are not aware of the concept of points based customer loyalty programs. Our efforts have helped retailers and marketers realize the relevance of various loyalty benefits and schemes. Indian retailers are now focusing on strong customer retention strategies to retain their customers and a loyalty programme is something which can help.

 

 

VB: Our strategies are mostly designed on a transaction based model. With every transaction that happens in the loyalty program network, we take some percentage of these transactions as fee.

 

 

VB: We have partnered with some leading players to form the PAYBACK network,, namely ICICI Bank, HPCL, Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar, MakeMyTrip.com to name a few.

 

Benefits to Partners  

Nowadays, companies have to work hard to win customers. PAYBACK has been helping its partners to win new customers and retain existing customer base by analysing their purchase behaviour. The use of the marketing platform increases customer satisfaction and improves the company’s profitability. We provide partners with a multitude of benefits. Partners gain \insight into the current needs of their customers, and can use it directly to plan during their campaigns stages.

 

Benefits to the Consumer

 

PAYBACK members can use a variety of offers as part of the program. With a single card, they can collect points at over 3000 POS and online stores, and then redeem these points quickly for a variety of rewards. Retail locations run by partners with a strong market presence are in the  cities across the country. In addition to collecting points on a regular basis during day-to-day shopping, PAYBACK customers can enjoy other unique benefits, including special offers, additional discounts, bonus points and customized product information. As a result, we recommend products which +are worth buying and helps people save money.

 

 

VB: We want to invest in people and plans to make the program better. The Indian retail sector is increasingly getting organized, with more spends. With the current 5% organized retail share there is possibility of 95% more consumer spends that can be further rewarded.   In order to work towards it PAYBACK will invest significantly in technology, back-end solutions and retail networks.Secondly; we want to develop innovative marketing tools, data mining and MIS technologies that will help us gain further consumer and partner insights.

 

 

VB: We are currently the dominant player however we welcome competition and are confident of facing them.