Does your favorite tablet or music player give you a hard time and needs extensive repairing? And they say it’s out of warranty, so now you need to shell out more moolah on repairing it.
End of the story? Not really. ZurePro is here to scratch this itch for everyone.
Founded by a 4-member team based in Mumbai, Zurepro offers extension of the warranty on your gadgets, for a period of 1, 2,or 3 years, as well can provide annual maintenance contracts of your gadgets depending on the suitability to the customers, thus giving a peace of mind to the gadget loving generation.
Zurepro plans to complete the warranty claims in a 7-day cycle in which they pick up the devices and drop them back. They also plan to cater this service for all devices with no restriction of brands.
We spoke with Mausumi Chakravorty, the co-founder and CMO of ZurePro to know more about the way in which the company works.
Mausumi says that the startup was born out of her co-founder, Prakhar Saxena’s personal strife. She says, “There was this period of time where every one of his devices kept having some problem or the other. Luckily his devices were under warranty so he got them replaced. But what about the ones that aren’t? That’s basically how we started out.”
She adds, “It is quite hard to ensure that the gadgets like Smart phones and tablets remain in good condition for longer periods without warranty. Consumers in India always think twice before buying such heavy gadgets due to high repairing cost involved, unless it is safeguarded with warranty. However, manufacturer warranty last for only 1 year. Fortunately, in India, the market for third party warranty and extended warranty is gaining popularity. So taking advantage and providing more warranty options, Zurepro, has exclusive third party warranty solutions for online customers.”
Zurepro has already tied up with 25 repair centers across Mumbai and plan to tie up with service centers of tier-1 cities as well. They believe a major challenge in the business is logistics and the unorganized repairing centers. Delivering the 7-day pickup and drop service would be challenging too considering the highly unorganized repairing centers across India which is an inflated and non-streamlined industry as well.
Now in its pre-launch phase, ZurePro is dry running its services with 15 clients that it has recently acquired. The cost of the warranty depends on the duration and the cost of the gadget; the costlier the gadget, the higher the cost of warranty. It is expected that nearly 25% of the customers claim their warranty, while the rest of the customers mainly do it for their peace of mind. This is where lies their revenue model.
Young gadget users are the segment of interest for ZurePro, said Mausumi. “We have a couple of channels, which includes the conventional online marketing and events. Apart from this we are also taking part in relevant trade shows to reach out to our audience,” she says.
The company is bootstrapped and will be looking to raise an institutional round of funding in the near future. “Once we hit about 1000 customers, we will start reaching out to investors. We’ve set ourselves a target of 5 to 6 months to achieve this.
