Maharashtra has always been in the forefront when it comes to innovations and supporting the startup ecosystem with government policies, taxation, and providing market for domestic consumption of technologies. Maharashtra state has been providing a nurturing environment for the start-up community especially the SaaS start-ups by providing an opportune ecosystem.
A typical SaaS company thrives if the ecosystem provides:
- Skilled talent pool
- Strong ecosystem that not only provides supportive mentorship, incubators but also conducive government norms
- Large market to test new concepts and drives domestic consumption of deep-tech solutions
- Strong SaaS heritage with experience in technologies like AI, ML, CRM, etc.
One such thriving start-up in Maharashtra making its way to the top is Locobuzz. The company was incorporated in March 2015. The founding team always believed in the power of analytics, especially when data sourced from different dimensions was converged and analyzed. The founders were also observing how social engagement and chatter for brands as a key channel of engagement was gaining prominence.
Thus, the idea of bringing powerful analytics, driven by data from various social media channels were formed and ‘Locobuzz – Location-based buzz’ came into the picture. “We started with simple plain analytics on unstructured data, focused on processing large volumes of data in real time and further augmenting it with sentiment analysis,” says the team of Locobuzz.
Going Loco
With time, the team observed how consumer expectation was changing rapidly – from no dialogue with brands to a need for meaningful two-way conversation, and social platforms were key drivers for this change. This is when the company started focusing on team workflows and other customer engagement initiatives.
As data volumes soared and technology advancements were made in Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, Locobuzz integrated powerful NLP capabilities along with various data models for language detection, intent detection, deviation alerts, emotions, etc. Now, it has also created a fully cognitive chatbot enabler. Locobuzz evolved into a fully integrated, unified Customer Experience Platform.
Locobuzz builds software to smartly connect brands and customers to each other. Locobuzz has a unique advantage over competitors. For example, some of them are simply a ticketing platform and the others are a combination of listening and ticketing platform. None of them have a complete CX solution. There are numerous features and functionalities as a unified platform that Locobuzz offers which simply do not exist in most of the competitors.
Locobuzz not only offers a complete unified solution but also with its capabilities in AI and Machine learning have capabilities like Chatbot, Image recognition, Emotions, etc. Even when just considered for Social Listening and Ticketing, Locobuzz as a product is a clear winner with its superior technology and far detailed and numerous capabilities. “We have listed some of the commonly sought–after and popular features where Locobuzz clearly emerges as a leader in this space,” shares Locobuzz’s team.
A Buzzing Leader
Shubhi Agrawal is the Co-Founder at Locobuzz. With an MBA degree from California State University and a strong background in business development, alliances and having worked closely with the technology teams to build and deliver solutions she is an excellent relationship builder. She has been successful in driving and achieving business objectives, collaborating with regional and global leaders and has strong communication skills. Shubhi loves to travel and read. In addition, she is also a fitness enthusiast.
Shubhi saw the value of customer experience, early on in her career, and how it is the single most important differentiator for companies to maintain a longer relationship and thus create a significant impact in the lifetime value of a customer. With experience in building strategic partnerships and launching new products, her skills are ideally suited to help build a great CX solution along with some great partnerships for Locobuzz.
“The road map of Locobuzz is to become a one-stop shop for all things related to customers – not just understanding the customers and engaging with them but also to provide powerful marketing applications to help the brands reach out to their target audience,” says Shubhi.
According to her, Locobuzz as a technology company needs to be ahead of the competition and it always thinks of the next step which will be required as a logical extension from the customer’s perspective. Enough and more research goes into building technology which then supports these requirements and fits into the company’s current architecture seamlessly.
Locobuzz in Future
Locobuzz’s team have clearly established its platform as a leader in the domestic markets where several marquee clients in the space of BFSI, retail, hospitality, automobile, and consumer durables etc. use this platform and are able to streamline customer experience for their brand and increase the lifetime value of the customers.
Locobuzz recognizes the role of machine learning and is investing heavily on it. In its product roadmap lot of features are based on machine learning which are currently non-existent in this domain. “The future is quite exciting and we are working on a lot of new and exciting features, that will change the way people look at platforms like ours,” describes Shubhi.
As a next logical step, the company envisions its platform to be expanded globally on the lines of sales force to provide support to its customers building mutually rewarding relationships with them. “We strive to help them in creating impactful connect with the customers and maintaining relationships which go beyond transactions,” concludes Shubhi with her team.
