Udaipur 2^nd April, 2022.

The community group buying platform Frendy announced its entry into Rajasthan with Udaipur as its first location. The platform plans to hire over 2000 home entrepreneurs in Udaipur. "Frendy Partners" who are also home entrepreneurs, run a digital grocery store for their communities. They offer customers great discounts on groceries & other daily necessities as they prefer to deal with their Frendy Partners directly.

Mrs. Monika Panwar and Mr. Bhupendra Panwar, Frendy's distributors in Udaipur, hosted a soft launch on 2nd April at a local venue where over 100 prospective Frendy Partners were invited to learn more about the Frendy Partner opportunity. In addition to the Frendy DOST company representatives, Arti Chaubey and Vinu Nakum were on hand to answer questions.

A Frendy Customer can place an order on Frendy’s customer mobile App or they can also ask the Frendy Partner to place an order on their behalf. All customer orders are delivered via the Frendy Partner who hands over orders and collects payment from customers. The best part is that in case of any issues faced the user simply has to contact the Frendy Partner instead of having to deal with Customer Care employees. This high touch model works for 95% of Indian customers who prefer to transact with a known person and helps them overcome the trust gap that ecommerce suffers from. Frendy says that they are not ecommerce but WEcommerce where they leverage community to build trust.  In addition, the Frendy’s app is available in Hindi interface.

Frendy’s focus on women has strong economic merit as women control 80% of discretionary spending and are decision makers & early adopters for their entire family. Frendy provides an opportunity to women to work part time, serve their communities & earn an income. Frendy Partners can earn between Rs. 5000-10,000 a month once they get a loyal customer base and this keeps increasing with local word of mouth. In addition, Frendy Partners feel a great sense of pride by serving their community and helping housewives save on their daily needs. This also gets them recognition within their own family. The in-app & online learning & development facilitated by Frendy, the support of a Woman’s network of similar Frendy Partners, the constant reward & recognition all helps to ensure the Frendy Partners “stickiness” with Frendy. This high-tech model is also high touch and with this engagement Frendy has been able to create a retention which is much higher than the typical reseller model.

Gowrav Vishawakarma, the co-founder of Frendy who hails from Udaipur and previously ran a tech start-up – Xavoc Tech from the Lake City said, "Women's microbusiness has been a highlight as well in Rajasthan. We are sure that by training our Frendy Partners we will be able to further strengthen our Main se Hum movement in Rajasthan as well."

Vinu Nakum, Growth Team Frendy, commented, "Udaipur has been very welcoming to Frendy and we are seeing a lot of positive response from our new Partners who are referring their friends and families to join our Frendy Main Se Hum movement."

Since it’s start in July 2020, the platform has scaled rapidly to 3000 Frendy Partners & 4,500+ products on the platform, growing 30% every month & targeted to reach an ARR of Rs. 300 Crore in the next financial year.  Its current team size is 100 people across Tech, Community Building & Operations which will be expanded to 200 in the coming year. The company has raised over $5 m in funding in the last year and is already active in 25 towns of Gujarat where the Social Commerce start up is providing grocery to Bharat neighbourhoods via women community leaders.  In its clustered growth approach, Frendy shortly plans to enter other towns in South Rajasthan such as – Sirohi, Abu Road, Dungarpur, Kota & Banswara, Nathdwara. It plans to start operations shortly in MP & West Bengal.

Mrs. Monika Panwar Frendy, DOST Udaipur said, “The Frendy's We commerce model immediately attracted me, and with my husband we decided to become the Frendy DOST franchisee for Udaipur, offering home entrepreneurs a fantastic opportunity to serve their communities and earn income.” She further added “we are confident that we will create 2000 digital supermarkets & successful home businesses in Lake City within six months.”