Bangalore: Busy lives, no time to spend with the dear ones, then how can one ask to go shopping. It is refreshing to see that the pain points of the customers are being addressed in a different ways and with unique solutions by startups. One such company is fopping.com, an e-commerce portal with a social element in it.

Based out of Hyderabad, fopping.com was established in November 2011 with a view to create a different picture of the e-commerce and the social network. The idea is all about attracting the youth who are engaged in social network throughout the day and wants to enjoy shopping online due to lack of time. “The consumption of digital media by the users have increased drastically and we planned to use this platform. The idea is all about engaging people and activities all around social network before they shop. That is the reason why and how we are playing the whole model of fopping,” says Rama Jamili, Co-Founder and Director, fopping.com.

Friend shopping, fun shopping and fashion shopping; include all these and you get the name of the company, fopping.com. Before the user buys anything, he needs to share a product, and depending upon the number of friends they get bonus points. This bonus point activates the discount meter and when they purchase a product, they can avail this. The strategy is simple; share and see your discount meter moving.

Talking about the business model, Jamili says, “Our idea of social shopping that we have implemented is still just a start. There is a road of things that we want to do. Once everything comes in place then we will be getting more presence in the market and social media network. In terms of going there, we are just three months old and we are getting traffic of 5000-6000 users per day.” The company is still to scale up in a big way and now it is in semi-scale up mode. The actual scale up will happen in the next one month.

The social activity involved helps fopping to gain around 60 percent of its customer base. Jamili feels that the model that they have created is a win-win-win model for all the three parties involves. Customers are getting huge discount, brands are getting more presence when the customer shares them on Facebook and Twitter, and last but not the least, fopping is also creating a brand value through word of mouth advertising.

Prior to founding fopping.com, Jamili had worked for Credit Suisse and Citadel Securities. He had studied in the U.S. at Stevens Institute of Technology. Jamili himself is a fun loving guy and describes himself as a good husband, and never forgets to thank his wife for helping him in every bit of his life.

Fopping.com took just four months to go from paper to picture. The team spent just one and a half months in brainstorming on the business model and the implementation part. The stealth mode company with 18 employees is bootstrapped and has no plans to raise fund as of now and plans to keep the company as a privately held one. 80 percent of the product offerings will be of clothing, shoes and accessories, and the rest 20 percent will be in terms of home décor and gadgets, feels Jamili.  In terms of work culture, fopping is no different from other startups that believes in providing freedom in term of coming up with ideas and implementing them.

Talking about the competition, Jamili says, “Every e-commerce company, big or small, is our competitor. And how to tackle them? Our business model is the answer to it.” Another challenge for the company was selling their concept and brining all stakeholders on the same page.  However, the company succeeded in doing so as the promoters believed strongly in the business model and the strength to scale up in the market.