Rise Retail & Payment Solutions: Creating a Growth Mechanism for Retailers

The advent of the e-commerce business has clearly rattled a lot of cages in the retail industry due to the massive discounts offered and the sheer ability to hold its customers. Even though the initial discounts offered by the e-commerce businesses had petered out, the stronghold grip they had on the consumers improved their reputation. This caused a huge flux in the unorganized retail segment simply because the small and medium retailers could not match the e-commerce business in terms of consumer engagement. The factors that influence consumers to get back to a retail store once previously visited are the special add-ons and the loyalty benefits which are missing in the unorganized retail segment. Rise Retail & Payment Solutions, a Pune, India-based company, focuses its solutions on these areas and addresses the core issues such as lack of enterprise skills, technology, consumer engagement, loyalty benefits that small and medium retail market lacks. “The key point for us in this ecosystem is to build a large network of retailers and continuously engage with them to uplift the skills of the retailers,” asserts Ajay Prasad, CEO and Founder Director of Rise Retail & Payment Solutions.

The company’s solution portfolio is broadly divided into four main segments that are significant for any retailer to be competitive—consumer engagement, consumer connect, office management, and revenue enhancer. The consumer engagement rides on a cloud-based system which boards the consumers once they come to a retail store and then further manages the complete lifecycle of the consumers at that particular retail store. Loyalty benefits and continued communication (automated wishes or offer based messaging) are two factors that Rise Retail & Payment Solutions stresses on to build a strong connection between the consumers and the retailers.

We help retailers in touching lives of consumers beyond transactions. Consumer connect makes sure that relevant offerings are sent to the consumers once they are engaged with the retail stores. Additionally, the office management solution helps the retailers create an online database which aids them in understanding the different customer categories and effectively targeting these for revenue optimization. Rise Retail also caters to the basic office management need of such retailers like basic invoicing. Further, the company’s revenue enhancer solution offers many services like customer referral module, enquiry generator, and a utility bill payment system that increases the overall ROI for the retailers. Our solution is a One-Stop-Shop for small retailers. Our aim is to reduce loss of customers at these outlets and build an enhanced brand image to pull customers to the outlets. This change in the ecosystem will bring lot more smiles to customers, who will be the ultimate winner of our effort.

Rise Retail & Payment Solutions aim to disrupt the retail market by providing solutions that drive through various low-cost sales channels. This could be the first time that such solutions are being pushed into the market through an inexpensive sales channel. Our aim is to build a large network and leverage the same to create profitability for every stakeholder. In our phase 2, we would launch payments and consumer-based solutions that would let us hold more retailers on board. “Our solutions address the core issues of the retailers, and hence we can build a long-term relationship with our merchants which is quite imperative,” explains Ajay Prasad. The company is also in advanced stage discussions with various banks in the Asia Pacific region through its consumer engagement solution which further boosts their merchant acquisition strategy. This will be carved out as a separate business vertical where our business model would primarily revolve around our processing capability to help banks in APAC with their merchant acquisition strategy.

Like all successful companies, Rise Retail & Payment Solutions has a vision for innovation, growth, and expansion. The company is focused on horizontal growth which will help them expand their portfolio of solutions and services at the same time. This could be achieved by creating a distribution system which is a first ever in the retail sector. Though many companies struggle to balance scalability and profitability, Rise Retail & Payments Solutions aims to perfect this balance by first building a strong base and then bring in the products. Web-enabled products and solutions are the company’s next project which would let them connect all the consumers engaged with the retail stores. Further, the firm also looks at expanding its retail base drastically and enabling it with payment solutions.