Redfynd: How It's Simplifying Online Shopping with AI-Powered Search and Discovery

Subham Kumar

May 16, 2024 — 12 min read

Redfynd- Simplifying Online Shopping with AI-Powered Discovery

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India's online retail market is booming. It is expected to reach $325 billion by 2030, mainly because of the increased expansion of e-commerce in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. A company that is trying to make its mark by tapping into the growth of this industry is Redfynd.

Redfynd is an AI-powered shopping search engine offering a wide range of products from almost all major online stores in India. With its advanced search features, customers can easily compare prices, sizes, and availability across multiple stores.

In this article, let's learn more about Redfynd, its founder, its business model, its revenue model, the challenges faced, growth strategies, and more.

Redfynd - Company Highlights

Company Name	Redfynd
Headquarters	India
Sector	E-Commerce Retail
Founder	Divya Manjari
Founded	2022
Website	redfynd.com

Redfynd - About
Redfynd - Industry
Redfynd - Founder and Team
Redfynd - Startup Story
Redfynd - Vision and Mission
Redfynd - Name and Logo
Redfynd - Product/Services
Redfynd - Business Model
Redfynd - Revenue Model
Redfynd - Launching Company Strategies
Redfynd - Customer Growth and Retention Strategies
Redfynd - Challenges Faced
Redfynd - Marketing Strategy
Redfynd - Competitors
Redfynd - Future Plans

Redfynd - About

Redfynd is an innovative AI-powered shopping search and discovery platform designed to transform the online shopping experience for Indian shoppers. Founded with the vision to simplify and enhance the way consumers shop online, Redfynd aggregates millions of fashion and beauty products from over 100 leading e-commerce platforms across India. The platform provides a seamless, user-friendly interface that allows shoppers to easily find, compare, and purchase products all in one place.

Redfynd revolutionizes online shopping with a personalized approach, using AI to recommend product deals based on individual styles and preferences. By doing so, it helps users make informed decisions quickly and efficiently, saving them time and money by helping them find the most relevant products at the best prices. Users also earn cashback for all valid purchases through the platform.

Redfynd is more than just a shopping site; it is a comprehensive shopping assistant that caters to the nuanced needs of today's digital consumers who value convenience, variety, and informed purchasing. Redfynd's mission is to empower users with the technology to navigate through the millions of options shoppers across stores effortlessly and make smart purchases, making Redfynd the go-to destination for online shopping in India.

Redfynd - Industry

Redfynd operates in the fast-growing Indian fashion and beauty e-commerce sectors. The fashion e-commerce market in India is expected to grow to $19.6 billion by 2024, making up 18.7% of the total e-commerce market. It is projected to expand at an annual growth rate of 12.6%, reaching $31.5 billion by 2028. Similarly, the beauty and personal care market is forecasted to generate $31.51 billion in revenue by 2024, growing at a rate of 3% annually through 2028. Within this, the personal care segment is expected to reach $14.31 billion.

Over the next five years, Redfynd plans to increase its user base from 1.5 million to 100 million. Redfynd is planning to launch a mobile app to optimize the shopping experience and attract a broader audience. The platform will continue to enhance AI-driven personalization to connect brands with their target consumers more effectively. Redfynd is also planning to partner with more brands to help improve their visibility and sales.

Redfynd - Founder and Team

Divya Manjari is the founder of Redfynd.

Divya Manjari

Manjari brings over 20 years of experience in retail and technology, having worked at some of the world’s leading retailers. Prior to founding Redfynd, she worked at Microsoft. She graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 2001 and completed an executive MBA from ISB in 2020.

Manjari has spent her career at the intersection of retail and technology building solutions for merchandising & supply chains and rolling out e-commerce websites across continents.

She is an avid online shopper and has spent thousands of hours on e-commerce as a user herself. It was a frustrating experience for her to hop across websites searching for products, filtering, and comparing to find what she needed.

Manjari saw an opportunity to create a platform that offered convenience and ease of shopping by leveraging technology. Once she set on the journey to build Redfynd, she gathered the core team of Product and engineering through referrals, LinkedIn job posts, and Internshala.

Redfynd Team

At Redfynd, they operate with a fully remote, 10-member team, prioritizing flexibility and autonomy. Their team members work from locations of their choice and set their own schedules, aligning daily through morning standup meetings to ensure everyone is on the same page. This daily touchpoint helps them set priorities, address challenges, and maintain team cohesion. The company's approach fosters a productive environment that supports work-life balance and effective team collaboration.

Redfynd Hiring Approach

Redfynd's hiring philosophy centers on identifying and empowering proactive, hands-on individuals, prioritizing practical skills and the ability to solve problems independently over traditional credentials.

Their process begins with skill-based assignments that assess candidates's practical abilities and work ethic. This is followed by a hands-on interview where shortlisted candidates must demonstrate their previous work and tackle a live problem, showing their capability to perform under pressure. This approach ensures they select individuals who are not only technically proficient but also adaptable and resilient, essential traits for thriving in a startup environment.

Redfynd - Startup Story

The idea for Redfynd was born out of Manjari's own frustration with online shopping. She was tired of hopping between multiple websites, comparing prices, and struggling to find what she wanted.

She realized that there had to be a better way to shop online, and that's when the idea for Redfynd started taking shape. To validate the idea, she conducted extensive research, talking to friends, family, and fellow shoppers to understand their pain points and what they wanted from an online shopping experience.

Manjari also analyzed the market, looking at existing solutions and identifying areas for improvement. This research helped her refine the concept and create a clear vision for Redfynd.

Redfynd - Vision and Mission

Short-term Vision: Redfynd aims to transform the online shopping experience in India by leveraging advanced AI-driven search and discovery tools that simplify the process of finding and comparing products across multiple e-commerce platforms. Their immediate focus is to expand their user base and enhance their technology and user experience to offer a seamless and personalized shopping experience.

Long-term vision: Redfynd's long-term vision is to become the starting point for online fashion and beauty shopping for India's 300 million online shoppers. The company envisions establishing itself as the go-to platform for smart shopping, where every search starts with them, leading the way in e-commerce innovation in India.

Mission: Redfynd’s mission is to empower consumers by providing a unified platform that delivers comprehensive, accurate, and real-time information on millions of products from various e-commerce sites. The company strive to make online shopping effortless, cost-effective, and highly personalized, helping users make informed decisions quickly and with confidence.

Core Belief and Motto

Innovation in Shopping: Redfynd is committed to transforming the shopping experience by integrating cutting-edge technology to enhance consumer benefits and satisfaction.

Redfynd - Name and Logo

Redfynd Logo

The name, tagline, and logo of Redfynd are deeply rooted in the essence of what its platform offers and Manjari's personal passion for word puzzles. The name 'Redfynd' emerged from a playful wordplay that encapsulates their mission to redefine the shopping experience.

It can be interpreted as 'Redfynd', highlighting their goal to transform how consumers find and compare deals. Alternatively, it blends 'Red' and 'Find', where 'Red' symbolizes the hot deals and savings available through its service, and 'Find' underscores its core functionality of helping users discover these opportunities.

Redfynd's logo—a stylized 'R' with an encompassing arrow—further reinforces this concept. The arrow signifies the ease and speed with which its users can access deals with just a 'single click'. This visual element encapsulates its commitment to efficiency and user-friendly design, ensuring that the best deals are always easily accessible.

Together, the name and logo not only represent Redfynd’s identity but also serve as a constant reminder of its dedication to simplifying and enhancing the online shopping experience for its users. Through these creative elements, the company communicates its value proposition clearly and effectively, making it instantly recognizable and memorable.

Redfynd - Product/Services

Redfynd is an AI-powered shopping search and discovery platform that simplifies and enhances the online shopping experience. It serves as a one-stop destination where users can find a wide array of fashion and beauty products from over 100 major e-commerce platforms in India, including Myntra, Ajio, and H&M. With a database of more than 5 million products, Redfynd aims to make online shopping more enjoyable, less time-consuming, and budget-friendly.

How Redfynd Works

Redfynd utilizes advanced artificial intelligence technologies, including natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and machine learning, to sift through millions of products online. This enables the platform to offer features like visual and semantic search and personalisation, allowing users to find products that closely match their intent and preferences easily. Users can compare prices, check available sizes, and read customer reviews across various platforms, all in one place, which simplifies the decision-making process.

Problems Solved by Redfynd

Redfynd addresses several pain points in the traditional online shopping process:

Simplifying The Choices: Helps users find and navigate through all available choices easily by filtering and presenting products that best match users' search criteria.
Time-Consuming Searches: Reduces the time spent hopping between different shopping sites through aggregated search results.
Informed Decision Making: Provides detailed product information, price comparisons, and customer reviews to help users make better-informed purchasing decisions.

USPs and Innovations of Redfynd

Unified Shopping Experience: Aggregates products from multiple e-commerce stores into a single platform, providing a seamless and cohesive shopping experience.

AI-Driven Personalization: Utilizes AI to understand user preferences and shopping behaviors, thereby personalizing search results to suit individual tastes.

Visual and Semantic Search Capabilities: Allows users to search using images, product URLs from 100+ stores, or nuanced queries, making it easier to find the exact products they are looking for.

Pivotal Changes in Redfynd

Redfynd has changed continuously to optimize it for a better shopping experience for users, but the core focus has always remained the same, leveraging AI to revolutionize the e-commerce experience for easier and smarter shopping for Indian shoppers across the globe. They have introduced several advanced features like advanced search and filtering, real-time price and size comparison, personalized recommendations, and a Redfynd rewards program that enables cashback through the platform.

Redfynd - Business Model

Redfynd's business model is all about making online shopping easy for users and benefitting e-commerce platforms and brands by offering them different ways to add value:

Affiliate Marketing: By acting as an intermediary platform between users and e-commerce sites, Redfynd facilitates transactions and earns commissions.
Promotional and Visibility Services: By offering listing and promotional services, Redfynd helps brands enhance their visibility among potential customers.
Data-Driven Insights: Through its analytics services, Redfynd provides valuable market insights to brands, helping them make informed business decisions.

Redfynd - Revenue Model

Here are the different revenue streams of Redfynd:

Sales Commissions: Redfynd earns commissions from partner brands when users make purchases through links on its platform.
Listing Services: The platform offers listing services to retailers and select brands, providing them with enhanced visibility and promotional opportunities.
Targeted Advertising Services: Redfynd delivers advertising that targets shoppers with high purchase intent, ensuring a high return on ad spend (ROAS).
Analytics Services: Redfynd offers subscription-based and one-time fee services for trend analysis, assortment analysis, competitive intelligence, and pricing intelligence reports.

Redfynd - Launching Company Strategies

Redfynd was initially launched as a beta version, introduced first to a network of friends and family. This approach allowed the gathering of valuable feedback and fine-tuning of the platform before the public launch.

After refining the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) based on this initial feedback, Redfynd was successfully launched to the public. A crucial strategy in acquiring the initial 100 users involved making full use of search engine optimization (SEO).

By ensuring that all data on the platform was effectively indexed by search engines, Redfynd captured organic traffic from potential users actively searching for better shopping options.

Redfynd - Customer Growth and Retention Strategies

Since the successful launch of Redfynd and the acquisition of its first 100 users primarily through search engine optimization, the company has expanded its strategies to include social media to significantly scale up its user base.

Recognizing Instagram as a crucial platform for its target demographic—tech-savvy, fashion-conscious, and bargain-hunting shoppers—Redfynd has tailored its content to engage this audience effectively. The company's posts leverage current trends to showcase the best deals, like the Barbenheimer-inspired Bollywood outfits post, which went viral with over a million views. This not only increased brand awareness but also highlighted its value proposition of providing the best deals.

To drive traffic to the website and convert viewers into users, Redfynd launched giveaway contests that reward users for referral signups. This strategy not only boosted its user base but also encouraged community engagement and interaction. New signups gain access to several engaging features like wishlist creation, sharing capabilities, and price drop alerts. These features are designed to enhance the user experience, fostering greater interaction and repeat usage.

To reach its initial milestone of 1,000,000 users, it implemented a strategic combination of marketing efforts focused on leveraging both digital and community-based channels.

In addition to SEO, engaging content across social media channels helped maintain user interest and foster community interaction. Redfynd included personalisation and other features to improve retention. Together, these strategic efforts successfully attracted 1 million users, establishing a solid foundation for future growth.

Redfynd - Challenges Faced

Educating consumers about the benefits of Redfynd, particularly in a saturated e-commerce market, is a significant challenge. The platform, which combines cashback rewards with price comparison and personalized shopping experiences, requires clear and compelling communication to highlight its advantages over traditional shopping methods. This involves not only demonstrating immediate savings and enhanced convenience but also ensuring an intuitive user experience that can overcome consumer inertia and loyalty to established platforms.

Short explainer videos have worked very well, as they can effectively communicate the benefits of Redfynd in a visually engaging and easily digestible format. These videos simplify complex ideas—like how Redfynd's cashback system works or the advantages of price comparison—making it easier for consumers to understand and see the value in changing their shopping habits.

Redfynd - Marketing Strategy

The ‘price comparison’ campaigns have been very effective in emphasizing the value of using Redfynd and encouraging users to routinely check the platform to ensure they are getting the best deals. By directly addressing the misconception that one e-commerce platform always offers the best prices, it draws in users who are looking to make more informed purchasing decisions.

Redfynd - Competitors

One of the competitors of Redfynd in the industry is Fashiola.

Redfynd - Future Plans

Geographic expansion to the US and Europe is on the cards, where users from across borders can discover products sold by online stores in India that ship to the user's location. Additionally, Redfynd plans to launch advanced features like AR stylist and voice search in local languages.

FAQs

What is Redfynd?

Redfynd is an AI-powered shopping search and discovery platform that simplifies and enhances the online shopping experience for Indian consumers.

When was Redfynd founded?

Redfynd was founded in 2022.

Who is the founder of Redfynd?