How Vyaparify is helping traditional MSMEs build a visible online presence

Ramesh Masala Dosa is a South Indian restaurant chain with 20 outlets across Indore. Despite being a well-known name in the city, its business was losing steam. 

To bring the mojo back into the business and ensure that all the outlets had a steady footfall, Muthuraman Tewar, the owner of Ramesh Masala Dosa, turned to Vyaparify— a provider of digital solutions to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

Soon after the outlet at Khatiwala Tank was registered on the Vyaparify platform, it began to appear on the first page of Google search results for the best South Indian restaurant in the area. This resulted in an influx of new customers, both tourists and locals.

How did this transformation happen? 

Vyaparify, a digital solutions provider, creates SEO-integrated mini websites for businesses, granting them a digital identity and visibility in local search results. 

A mini website is a single platform for merchants to showcase their digital identity, including contact information, social media links, product images, and business descriptions.

In the case of Ramesh Masala Dosa, Tewar subscribed to Vyaparify to get a mini website done for the outlet in Khatiwala Tank (https://id.vyaparify.com/ramesh-masala-dosa).

Consequently, after the success of this experiment, Tewar is now in the process of registering his other outlets on Vyaparify and getting mini sites done for them as well.  

Through the Vyaparify platform, Ruby Jain, Founder of Vyaparify, seeks to narrow the digital gap for conventional businesses and traditional stores and preserve their legacy in the age of the internet. 

Vyaparify ensures that merchants establish a digital presence and become easily discoverable in Google search results, thus providing them an opportunity to expand their business and attract new customers.

How it started

Jain comes with nearly 20 years of experience in the banking sector, from 2003 to 2022, including a stint as the business head for HDFC Merchant Business. 

During this period, she obtained valuable insights into the challenges that merchants encountered as they entered the digital realm. Merchants were facing difficulties in going online, either due to the cost involved or the complexities of the process. 

As Jain interacted with merchants from physical stores, she realised that their challenges were not adequately addressed either by the banking sector or the providers of digital services; support was restricted to just commerce or logistics. 

“One of the primary hurdles for merchants was their denial about the loss of wallet share they face by not being present online,” says the founder of Vyaparify. 

This reluctance, she notes, often stems from years of operating solely offline and the fear of the complications of going online. It became evident to Jain that the merchants and businesses with physical stores needed handholding in the process of online transformation. 

Hence, Jain founded Vyaparify in June this year to help businesses take their first step towards establishing an online presence with a simple and straightforward process. 

What Vyaparify does

Vyaparify’s operating model is founded on the idea of making businesses available to customers online, even when the core transactions occur offline.

To facilitate creation of content for mini websites, Vyaparify employs an AI interface that prompts merchants to answer basic questions related to business name, establishment year, type of business, and the business location. This tool, which is available in Hindi and English, helps merchants generate a description for their business. 

Through the mini website, customers can interact with merchants, place orders, and book appointments. 

Customers can interact with merchants by clicking on the WhatsApp or Instagram icon available on the site. This action directs the user to the respective apps.

“Merchants are accustomed to conversational commerce, where they share the product information via WhatsApp. Customers subsequently make payments through UPI or use the WhatsApp Pay feature. They then either collect the products from the store or the merchants deliver them,” says Jain.

The mini site also provides a platform for personal branding, where businesses compile all their social media accounts, such as Facebook and Instagram, as well as other identities, such as Google or Amazon IDs, in one place. 

This consolidation not only makes businesses easily discoverable but also builds instant trust among customers, points out Jain. 

The platform offers a subscription-based model at a fee of Rs 1,700 for six months and Rs 3,000 for annual subscription.

Vyaparify also recognises the pivotal role of search engine optimisation (SEO) in driving online engagement. 

“Vyaparify offers hyperlocal integrated SEO at a nominal cost, ensuring that businesses not only have an online presence but also a visible and active one,” says the founder.

“It’s not just about building a website, it’s about ensuring that the website attracts traffic and keeps users engaged,” she adds. 

Citing the example of Nema Gajak, a sweet shop in Indore, Jain explains that, initially, the platform focused on ensuring that the client’s website appeared prominently in local search results. 

For instance, the site showed up within the first few Google search results when someone looked for something specific like ‘best gajak (a dry sweet made with sesame seeds and jaggery) in Chhappan Dukan’. Chhappan Dukan is a popular food street in Indore.

Later, the scope was expanded to ensure the client’s website was visible in broader searches like ‘best gajak in Indore’. 

“The goal is to further extend this reach to the best gajak in Madhya Pradesh,” says the founder.

“We really want to scale it. For the first 1,000 merchants, we got them featuring on more than 1 lakh Google searches and we could give them 85,000 page views. This is creating a sizeable impact,” says Jain. 

Business growth and future plans

Since its launch, Vyaparify has worked with around 2,000 MSMEs primarily in Indore and some in Ujjain, Bhopal, and Pune. Of the merchants onboarded, 60% belong to the services sector such as spa & salon, while the remaining deal with products such as apparel, grocery and pharmaceuticals.

Vyaparify’s competitors include platforms like Dukaan, Bikayi, GoFrugal, and MyEasyStore. 

Currently, there are 35 members in Vyaparify's team; it aims to expand to 100 by next month.

Going forward, the digital service provider seeks to expand to other Tier II and Tier III cities in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat. It also plans to introduce modules that cater to the merchants’ evolving needs. 

Coming up next is Socify, a tool powered by AI and ML, which will help MSMEs become more active on social media. 

“This feature simplifies content creation for merchants, making it user-friendly and niche-specific. The goal is to boost social media presence and customer reach,” says Jain.

Vyaparify is also planning to introduce an ecommerce feature for merchants, which will be integrated with logistics, thus providing an end-to-end solution. It is also exploring partnerships with associations promoting artisans.