Storrz is a Bangalore based online social shopping website that seems to have a few good things going for it. It recently demoed at the Delhi edition of Proto (where I thought it was one of the best startups on display). They have a concept that is intriguing, they seems to have struck the right initial channel partnerships and have paying customers to vouchsafe for the concept (check out the pitch slide deck below for details).
As the deck illustrates, shopping is (PARTLY) a social experience; the social influence varies from product to product and if done right, it can be a powerful idea. I think there are different grades of consumer behavior as far as shopping goes. Some shopping behavior is not social at all- think of the big branded products. Their share of voice in mainstream media is strong enough to induce trial purchase on a self-sustaining basis. On the other hand, for unbranded products (having low share of voice), the word of mouth component becomes more strident; often it can lay the seed for future mass market penetration. From that perspective, Storrz is doing something smart – check out their panel of online merchants. There is a disproportionate representation from lesser known brands, many of which are local players in different Indian cities. These merchants will see online orders from Storrz as a crucial part of their order basket (and coming from a hitherto untapped market as well) and hence strive for higher service quality. At least for a start, this is a much better strategy than trying to sell the omnipresent nationally branded items and try to take on the Ebays & Futurebazaars of the world.
Storrz is currently looking to raise some capital to fund its growth, in case this sounds interesting, you can ping its founder CEO Chandan at chandan.maruthi@justondemand.com.
And yes, the slide deck could have done better with Indian names…Tim has a poor connect with the target market.
