Product
Inoof comprises three main parts:
1. User Portal (product screenshots on page 9)
2. Matching/Aggregation/Delivery Engines
3. Inoof Platform
1. The User Portal: http://www.inoof.com This Web 2.0 Portal presents hyper aggregated information to the user, in a simple convenient format. It contains shareable lists such as shopping, to-do, contacts, calendar, etc, by which the users declare what they want. Each list is backed by custom engines that deliver highly targeted advertisements and services for items in the lists. Eventually, these lists will morph into highly customizable pages that display relevant information such as deals, reviews, news, special offers, asynchronous research and more. The users can access this information via multiple channels such as the web, email, Instant Messaging (IM) and text messaging (SMS). The user controls what data is shared, and with whom.
2. Matching/Aggregation/Delivery Engines: These engines match the items in the users’ lists with information aggregated from a wide variety of online sources, including value added services and promotions provided by Inoof’s business partners, and user generated content etc. These engines will also deliver targeted advertisements related to the products or services in the users’ lists. For example, the users shopping list can be enriched with information aggregated by the “deal” recommendation engines, coupons, review consolidation engines etc. Special incentives from retailers or service providers will be presented to the user, thereby reducing the net cost to the user. Similarly, the calendar list can display information from local events and restaurants and more. The engines will crawl thousands of sites in each category, collate the data, parse and interpret it, apply custom algorithms to convert this data into information and thereby come up with “digests” that will be presented to the user, along with tailored recommendations.
There is a significant amount of proprietary development involved in creating these engines, and this will constitute the IP at Inoof.
Inoof will also provide some special engines that enable the users to offload time consuming web oriented tasks to the Portal. Example: a student wanting to research a specific topic could add it to their “research list” on the Portal. This list would be served by an asynchronous meta/deep search engine that would present a unified context-sensitive report to the user, with text/images/video and more.
3. The Inoof Platform: Inoof will also provide the technology platform for the retailers to access the Inoof Business Intelligence (BI) information and for them to provide retail services that will be integrated with the Portal. The BI information and all processes related to these will be part of the Inoof IP too. The platform includes tools, browser plug-ins and widgets etc that will enrich the user experience on Inoof’s partner sites too.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Business Opportunity
Convenience and time-saving are two key factors that encourage online shopping. However, consumers now spend, on average, 10-20 hours/week online[1] to get to what they want, in various activities such as comparison shopping, researching, and using online services. This laborious shopping pattern puts a burden on the consumers’ time and leads to higher advertising and customer acquisition costs for the businesses. There is a significant opportunity in, instead, letting the consumers declare what they want, and bringing the market and information to them.
For consumers, Inoof is an online service that enables them to declare what they want and delivers the information/service requested in a simple convenient format within a specified period of time. It aggregates the relevant/desired information from multiple online sources, thus saving time for the consumers. Inoof connects the consumers with the appropriate providers for online services such as shopping, research and premium content and funnels incentives from the providers to the consumer. These services and information are presented to the consumer via a rich, customizable website. Users benefit from this time-saving “here’s what I want, you come to me” approach, lower prices and additional incentives. Our mission is to make Inoof.com the go-to site for online shopping and related activities.
For businesses, Inoof is a new channel that offers an opportunity for targeted sales and advertising enabling businesses to offer custom products and services for their users. Inoof provides valuable Business Intelligence to retailers, based on the aggregate “wanted” data shared by the consumers, and enables them to sell to the consumers via the Inoof portal. Businesses get access to a huge base of “ready-to-buy” consumers, thereby reducing their customer acquisition costs. Inoof significantly increases their ROI by more effective targeting, and provides a completely new source of predictive sales intelligence.
Our market is the 60-90MM online users who use comparison shopping and aggregator sites. The addressable size of the market exceeds $20bn in advertisement spending. An initial investment of $1MM will allow us to build our team, product and some partnerships in 12 months. A subsequent investment of $2MM will enable us to establish our brand, enhance the product, get customers and achieve profitability.
Example: Say you want to buy a digital camera by Christmas. You conveniently add it to the shopping list on the Inoof Portal via your mobile device, email, instant message (IM), text messaging (SMS), or while browsing a retailer’s website. Our short-term vision, when you view your shopping list, is to display useful and targeted information about the product you want to buy, such as deals/coupons, special offers from retailers that could reduce your purchase price, integrated options to purchase it from within the portal, review digests/summaries, recommendations and more. Meanwhile, retailers that have subscribed to the Inoof Business Intelligence data will get valuable information such as “200 users in zip code 01824 want to buy a digital camera by Christmas” and much more.
Used car example: Say you want to buy a used car. You specify the criteria that are important to you on a car list/page – a mileage range, a price range, few models, and some premium features. The car shopping engine will search through hundreds of cars from sites such as Edmunds.com and kellybluebook.com etc, in addition to reviews, dealer incentives and more. The engine will process this data using proprietary algorithms, and recommend the top 5 cars that you may want to look at.
[1] Gomez.com research (http://www.gomez.com/); Online Publishers Association (http://www.online-publishers.org/); Shop.org statistics; IT Facts (http://www.itfacts.biz/)
Convenience and time-saving are two key factors that encourage online shopping. However, consumers now spend, on average, 10-20 hours/week online[1] to get to what they want, in various activities such as comparison shopping, researching, and using online services. This laborious shopping pattern puts a burden on the consumers’ time and leads to higher advertising and customer acquisition costs for the businesses. There is a significant opportunity in, instead, letting the consumers declare what they want, and bringing the market and information to them.
For consumers, Inoof is an online service that enables them to declare what they want and delivers the information/service requested in a simple convenient format within a specified period of time. It aggregates the relevant/desired information from multiple online sources, thus saving time for the consumers. Inoof connects the consumers with the appropriate providers for online services such as shopping, research and premium content and funnels incentives from the providers to the consumer. These services and information are presented to the consumer via a rich, customizable website. Users benefit from this time-saving “here’s what I want, you come to me” approach, lower prices and additional incentives. Our mission is to make Inoof.com the go-to site for online shopping and related activities.
For businesses, Inoof is a new channel that offers an opportunity for targeted sales and advertising enabling businesses to offer custom products and services for their users. Inoof provides valuable Business Intelligence to retailers, based on the aggregate “wanted” data shared by the consumers, and enables them to sell to the consumers via the Inoof portal. Businesses get access to a huge base of “ready-to-buy” consumers, thereby reducing their customer acquisition costs. Inoof significantly increases their ROI by more effective targeting, and provides a completely new source of predictive sales intelligence.
Our market is the 60-90MM online users who use comparison shopping and aggregator sites. The addressable size of the market exceeds $20bn in advertisement spending. An initial investment of $1MM will allow us to build our team, product and some partnerships in 12 months. A subsequent investment of $2MM will enable us to establish our brand, enhance the product, get customers and achieve profitability.
Example: Say you want to buy a digital camera by Christmas. You conveniently add it to the shopping list on the Inoof Portal via your mobile device, email, instant message (IM), text messaging (SMS), or while browsing a retailer’s website. Our short-term vision, when you view your shopping list, is to display useful and targeted information about the product you want to buy, such as deals/coupons, special offers from retailers that could reduce your purchase price, integrated options to purchase it from within the portal, review digests/summaries, recommendations and more. Meanwhile, retailers that have subscribed to the Inoof Business Intelligence data will get valuable information such as “200 users in zip code 01824 want to buy a digital camera by Christmas” and much more.
Used car example: Say you want to buy a used car. You specify the criteria that are important to you on a car list/page – a mileage range, a price range, few models, and some premium features. The car shopping engine will search through hundreds of cars from sites such as Edmunds.com and kellybluebook.com etc, in addition to reviews, dealer incentives and more. The engine will process this data using proprietary algorithms, and recommend the top 5 cars that you may want to look at.
[1] Gomez.com research (http://www.gomez.com/); Online Publishers Association (http://www.online-publishers.org/); Shop.org statistics; IT Facts (http://www.itfacts.biz/)
Inoof.com - Business Plan
Anurag Wakhlu
Founder
Executive Summary…..………………..2
Example …..………………..2
Product …..………………..3
Business / Revenue Model …..………………..4
Competitive Landscape …..………………..4
Growth And Exit Strategy …..………………..5
Sources and Uses of Funds …..………………..5
Management Team …..………………..5
Timeline …..………………..7
Business Model …..………………..7
Market Size …..………………..8
Users …..………………..8
Expected Revenues …..………………..9
Status …..………………..9
Beta Product Screenshots …..………………..10
Anurag Wakhlu
Founder
Executive Summary…..………………..2
Example …..………………..2
Product …..………………..3
Business / Revenue Model …..………………..4
Competitive Landscape …..………………..4
Growth And Exit Strategy …..………………..5
Sources and Uses of Funds …..………………..5
Management Team …..………………..5
Timeline …..………………..7
Business Model …..………………..7
Market Size …..………………..8
Users …..………………..8
Expected Revenues …..………………..9
Status …..………………..9
Beta Product Screenshots …..………………..10
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