How is Thriwe creating a consumer benefits marketplace for premium brands?

Thriwe is a B2B Consumer Benefits Marketplace that caters to both National and International Markets. The 10-year-old company has headquarters in India. It also has offices across UAE, Singapore, London and Florida. The company provides an ecosystem that delivers premium Customer Acquisition, Retention, and Allegiance services to leading Financial Institutions and Card Networks.

The startup started with a Golf management platform. It also offers a host of lifestyle, wellness, entertainment and shopping benefits. “We empower clients to invigorate engagement with their most valuable customers. Some of our trusted partners are Amex, Mastercard, VISA, HSBC, Standard Chartered, HDFC, Axis Bank, Mashreq Bank, Union Pay, UOB, DBS,” the team says.

About the team of Thriwe

Dhruv Verma is the Founder and CEO of Thriwe. An XLRI alumnus, he is a passionate startup enthusiast, famous for his Golf entrepreneurial stint - GolfLan. He carries a rich experience within the space of customer acquisition, strategic partnerships and associations. Before his entrepreneurial stint, he has worked with Aircel, Standard Chartered and CPP at various senior managerial positions.

Swati Sharma is the Co-Founder and COO of Thriwe. An alumnus of London Business School, she is a famous Woman in Tech. At Thriwe, Swati leads the operational and strategic scale-up of the company. Before this, Swati has hands-on experience in demonstrating strategic partnerships, technology setups, corporate planning. She has worked with KPMG and InspireOne Consultants.

With CiOL, the founders draft the journey of the company. Excerpts of the interaction:

How did you come up with the idea?

Dhruv: Right from my childhood days, I had been fascinated by the idea of having a business of my own. Back in those days, my entrepreneurial stints would include an architectural consultancy, retail personalised stationery business. While I was in the UK and trying to play a game, I was flabbergasted to see that I could book a golf game online but no platform like that was actually available in India. Hence, that triggered and paved a way for Thriwe - erstwhile GolfLan.

Initially, the whole idea was to connect the India Golfer with the Golf courses around the world. It was the innovation that totally revolutionized the golfing scenario. Hence, the venture took a wheel of fortune spin. Today, Thriwe has diversified and evolved itself to become India’s leading b2b consumer benefits marketplace. It caters to national and international markets in 130 countries worldwide with a 30000+ stakeholder network.

What are the changes you are bringing into the market?

Swati: “Discover new engagement offerings that did not exist yesterday, every day!” This is a biblical line we go by. Our B2B offerings start from a minimum of 30% and enter a free zone of 100%. Our USP has been our exclusive approach towards data analytics. It includes a study of HNI usage patterns, an understanding of consumer demographics coupled with curating cost-effective offerings. We have a network of over 30,000 partners across 130+ countries worldwide. These partners are across service categories such as sports, travel, digital offers, lifestyle, dining, and wellness.

Basis our customer requirements, budgets, consumer demography, objectives, we create a unique standout, benefits strategy. Our customer-centricity has been the heart of our success. We scaled from golf into multiple categories because our client wanted to work with us across all allegiance categories because of the trust, integrity, constant innovation and high level of customer service that we offer.

Our business model involves aggregating a large network of partners and high-value tangible offers on one side; customising and personalising them using our business intelligence for our clients on the other side, and finally delivering them through white-labelled and off the shell technology platforms.

What has 2020 changed for you? How are things now?

Dhruv: 2020 has been a year of a roller coaster ride. We all witnessed an unprecedented situation like compulsory quarantines and mandatory lockdowns. The customer-centric industries felt the bruises of the economic slowdown. In the first place, pandemics like these are unrealistically real but they do make you revisit your strategies and long term business plans. For us, the pandemic turned out to be a blessing in disguise - we became more operationally efficient.

Our business plan witnessed a revitalization therapy in terms of new product offerings and services portion. We focused on digital and virtual customer engagement. We also ventured into the digital segment of aggregation and launched our exclusive digital platform - WeLive. The flagship subscription-based unique program offers a host of lifestyle benefits. Now major card network companies are using it to facilitate customer engagement.

What are your plans for 2021?

Swati: Travel is a new entrant in our portfolio. We wish to expand our travel and lifestyle portfolio with dedicated teams. Generating revenues and increasing profitability in new streams is our prime focus. Our focus further dives into the automation of backend operations.

Funding

Dhruv: We raised our angel round from Gurgaon based Angel Fund - YourNest fund in 2015. But, before that, we survived due to the trust of a lot of our family and friends. A lot of close associates who had seen us work in the past trusted and they put in their own money. So friend and family round sustained us, then we raised the angel round through YourNest fund after that we had another round of funding from Africa’s Ison Networks in 2017