Rural commerce platform Hesa has acquired Flinkhub to enhance their super app and drive product-led Growth. Hesa will bring onboard Flinkhub’s Co-Founders Ashish Rajput, Ananth SNC and Jerrin Joy to accelerate their product adoption among India’s next billion users. Flinkhub is a platform for creators to build social learning experiences.
With this aquisition, the team will focus their efforts on enhancing the Hesa Super App capabilities, from a ‘phygital’ marketplace to a technology led interface where a rural consumer gets access to all their product & service needs in one place.
“With the acquisition of Flinkhub and its team we have made a 2-fold commitment towards our product-led approach to Hesa Super App. The founders, IIT-Kharagpur Alumnus, come with a product & user centric approach that will boost our expertise in this area and will help Hesa widen its key offerings to customers on the grass-root level across India. We are really excited about this new acquisition and the new energy the founding team will be bringing to Hesa." said Vamsi Udayagiri, Co-Founder and CEO, Hesa.
Flinkhub has 2 products - Flinkhub Relationship Intelligence, a tool that accurately maps a user’s network and Papertown, a social networking app for learning. Hesa will use these technologies for product-led acquisition & training of their network of village-level entrepreneurs (VLEs) to solve the challenge of outreach in remote locations.
Hesa has 40,000 VLEs (village level entrepreneurs) or Hesaathis who use the Hesa Super App to fulfil the needs of users in their village network. FinTech, Agri, E-commerce and Digital brands integrate their products on the Super App and get direct access to rural users.
“Technology has drastically changed the way we work, earn, spend and live. We’re truly at an inflection point, with a large consumer base coming online for the first time. We are also working on Consumer Workflows through Telegram, Whatsapp, SMS, Call Bots to make life easier for rural consumers to directly order from Hesa's unique Platform.”, states Ananth SNC, who will head Technology at Hesa.
Hesa’s marketplace drives 150 Cr monthly GMV and is growing rapidly with 20% MOM growth. India’s rural market of 70 Cr users is largely untapped. Several Fintech, Agri, FMCG and digital brands are now focussing on serving this market. Hesa is backed by investors like Venture Catalyst and WeFounderCircle.
”Hesa’s phygital model already drives 18% online commerce in villages, which is higher than many cities. Scaling this across India’s 6.5 lac villages requires unique strategies, quite different from what works for urban.”, states Jerrin Joy, who will drive Growth at Hesa.
Hyderabad-based HESA recently announced plans to provide financial solutions to over 60,000 village-level entrepreneurs across 30,000 villages by the end of 2022. It will provide ease of transitions such as bill payments, opening an account to withdraw money, small needs like mobile recharge, bus ticket booking, opening Demat accounts, among others to rural India.
“Building products for the next billion users requires a highly user-centric approach. They have unique ways of interacting with technology. Hesa’s widespread Hesaathi network and consumer intelligence puts us at the forefront to build for them." states Ashish Rajput, who will lead Product at Hesa.
About Hesa:
Hesa is a unified social, digital and physical (phygital) commerce platform enabling digital transactions of products and services in rural India. Headquartered in Hyderabad, Hesa with integrated B2B marketplace is enabling buying and selling of various services and products with an almost ‘doorstep access’ with a network of 30,000 village network entrepreneurs serving more than 700,000 customers in a short span of one year. Hesa has partnered with more than 65+ brands, this unique model is a win-win initiative for both entrepreneurs and startups.
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