Deepak Jain on Swych's gift card exchange platform

0:23started about four years ago and we started the company to reinvent the digital gift space where a lot of activity happens still using plastic cards and there is a lot of Fraud and a lot of U lack of data that the retailers experience with in the plastic Gift Card World so we looked at creating a modern digital platform which will streamline the

0:52process of gifting between consumers and in the process provide the retailers with a much better technology a great resistance to fraud and a lot more visibility about what their consumers are doing that's wonderful and now when I think of switch I see that you guys have the ability to switch value between cards or different retailers is that right and is the problem that you guys

1:20are trying to solve is just that the plastic cards have fraud or is it also about retaining that value yeah great question so there's a multitude of problems we're trying to solve so yes the basic value proposition is about me sending a gift to a friend you know whose likes and preferences are not immediately known and people's test changes every day

1:48you know sometimes you are in need for something and you don't necessarily always share that with everyone so if I'm sending a gift to my friend or family they should be able to easily switch that to a retailer of their choice which makes for a great user experience and also gives me a satisfaction as a sender that my gift is going to be utilized and it will

2:15not be stuck in a drawer somewhere so for a consumer it solves the problem of wonderful experience both for the sender and the recipient and for the retailer it solves the problem of ensuring that it's digital it is completely visible to them as to who the users are and they can they can also get some increased insights on what kind of products the consumers are

2:44preferring and because it's digital they can also keep in touch with the consumer and make sure that they come and visit the store and these are all of the things that we facilitate through our platform that's great deepok and I can imagine with the digital version there's a lot more tracking available and a lot more analytics that you're allowed to see whereas where if you give

3:07away a gift card you never know when it switches hands and whatnot absolutely and a lot of it just stays in drawer sometimes it gets posted on eBay for people to sell if they don't want to use it and things of that sort so with the digital technology we can not only track the usage we can also present offers to cons consumers to you know from the retailers

3:32so that they are more motivated to go and actually shop at the store and we can also weed out a lot of unwanted Behavior like people wanting to you know use stolen credit cards and things like that to buy gift cards which is a big fraud problem but the digital technology helps us with putting safeguards in place against against all of these and actually

3:57driving traffic that the retailers want to have great so if I'm an end consumer and I'm looking to purchase a gift card for one of my friends would I just go to the switch site and purchase it directly and I see that's more of a b2c kind of model but are you guys also working on a B2B model yes we have a mobile app in the US and we do have a website in other

4:23countries we have launched B2B capabilities in several countries India is one of our largest markets for B2B where companies and loyalty platforms can actually use our digital capability to issue gift cards for their consumers either whether it's for employees or for partners whether it's for just issuing an

4:51incentive or a bonus or for converting your points or miles into gift cards these are all B2B use cases that we are we are powering today and we are launching this capability in the US as well that's great tepac it only makes sense to be going digital and with that said I could see how there might be some competitors already in this space what does the competitive landscape look like

5:13right now and what is your guys's unique value proposition yes there are a lot of websites that allow you to purchase an electronic gift card in the US there are some marketplaces that let you trade gift cards like an eBay would so there's some specialized websites like eBay a version of eBay you would

5:41you would almost call call them that which are secondary exchanges where people take their existing cards and trade them we have built this from a fintech Viewpoint so we do not deal in secondary products we do not take your plastic card that you might have purchased at a convenience store and let you sell it like an eBay would what we do is we work with retailers directly

6:09we connect with the retailers on a real-time basis with our platform and we are able to switch the credentials and the money between retailers on a realtime basis everything that we sell is brand new and there's no recycled cards or any kind of those type of issues that you would see so it's a modern platform that's really our

6:35technological Edge our competitive Advantage the entire switch value proposition was pioneered by us and being able to give the recipient the actual Choice versus a sender choosing on your behalf was really the pioneering idea that we brought to this Market U few years ago that's great and how much time have you guys put into developing the platform and how long has

7:02it been in the market for now our first app was launched in h fall of 2016 so it's been around for some time that's great and what is the current business model behind switch and what kind of you know revenues are you guys driving from your current platform yeah good question so we work with the retailers directly and the retailers actually provide us an

7:31incentive to bring the consumers to their stores and that's done by by enabling the switch to their store via the digital gift cards that we sell so the business model is based on the incentives that the retailers provide to us and sometimes we pass on some of those incentives as offers to our customers but those incentives dve

8:00our main value proposition and on the business to business side we work with corporates and Enterprises more in a software as a service capability where they can use our platform to modernize their incentives rewards and loyalty Redemption type of offerings in the marketplace that's great and I see that switch has a piece of it called

8:28blockchain labs now is this part of the B2B that you're working with businesses or is it that blockchain is integrated into switch directly and I'd love to learn a little bit more about that yes so the use of blockchain is really targeted towards pioneering the idea of crossborder gifting which means that if I'm able to send a gift to a friend and the friend is in

8:58another country the friend should still be able to use our platform and switch the retailer as well as the currency in the same transaction so it'll be me sending for example $100 to my friend in UK and I might have picked you know a retailer in the US but my friend in the UK can switch it in a single click

9:28To a retailer in the UK and also convert US Dollars into into GBP in the same click so we are using some of that technology on blockchain and we have already launched this capability across a us to India Corridor and we are looking at launching this across ac across different corridors like that so that's the main

9:58purpose and as you as you can imagine you know gifting is now becoming a service versus being a product you know it used to be a product that used to hang in store shelves you know plastic card that people can pick but now as a service it's really solving a key problem which is being able to stay connected with your friends and family no matter where you are or where they

10:26may be and being able to send something to them on their birthday anniversary or whatever occasion in a single click so as we convert our gifting you know into a service there are a lot of other opportunities around this technology around Payment Processing around digital wallets around using artificial intelligence to predict

10:54what kind of gifts might be preferred or wanted by by the AUD a to even putting gifting inside inside your popular platforms like vat or things like those which is things that we are working on so this is what blockchain labs does it looks at all of these modern Technologies so that we can integrate them into our platform to continue to improve and bring more

11:24capabilities onto onto a gifting service that's great deac and how many are is this something that's going to be implemented in the short term or what does the road map look like you know in the next six months for what kind of things you're going to be bringing out as new features or functionality for switch yeah great question no you know blockchain has been something we've

11:48been working on for some time as I mentioned aspects of it's already implemented we're also we've also implemented a capability for consumers to trade their Bitcoins or ethereums for gift cards in the US so we are expanding that capability as well and some of the other technologies that I mentioned around conversational Commerce and use of digital wallets

12:19or chat platforms we are working on them and plan to release a lot of updates for our consumers in the in the coming months that's great and what would you say is the biggest challenge behind this is the development a challenge or user acquisition for a b2c service like this you know user acquisition is always a key aspect it's always a key

12:48Area of focus for us to drive our awareness of our product our brand in consumers so that's always you know something that is heavy in our priorities as a focus area but also we want to stay ahead of the game we want to bring a lot of Innovations that's what switch is really all about is innovating and continually staying ahead of the curve is what

13:18drives us got to keep expanding as you say and now what are you guys looking for more developers or just more customers or even outside investors you know what are you guys really searching for right now as as you expand yes we are growing very rapidly we work we are working with Partners to drive the adoption of our Network so we're looking for Innovative

13:42companies like us who can partner with us and take our technology and make it available to their consumers we looking for developers we are looking for retailers in other parts of the world to come on board our platform so you know a lot of different areas where where we growing that's great and are you guys looking to become you know more saturated inside of the United

14:07States or are you targeting other geographic regions throughout the world that you haven't touched yet we are we are absolutely looking at expanding GE geographically we are looking to bring our service into the UK into Canada into Japan and several other markets that's great deac so if these outside parties are looking to get more information on switch or reach out

14:32to you for strategic Partnerships and whatnot what is the best way to contact you guys yes marketing at go switch.com we pay very strong attention to companies looking to partner with us so that's a resource email marketing at go switch.com also our Facebook page please feel free to visit and you know and reach us at our Facebook

15:01or Twitter handles we'll be we'll be happy to get in touch wonderful I will leave your contact details in the description box below under the video and that's all the time we have today but I really appre appreciate you taking the time DPAC it was great to hear about Switch and I'm looking forward to following along in the coming months for another interview so thank you so much

15:21for your time thank you and thanks for having me it was great talking thank you