Fordo (The List)

A consumer spends significant amount of time on cost-consumption management like identifying needs, checking prices, planning budget, going shops, tracking expenses, etc. In process very often conflicts, poor decision and mismanagement causing time and money waste. 

Fordo as aggregator collecting consumer data making them organized, synchronized and digitally assisted. 

Fordo getting data from user’s manual inputs. In this connected world data comes from smart devices and shops, even user history can auto-generate data. 

Fordo also an integrator, integrates local shops, retails, services and marketers to create direct sales and marketing channel.

Bangladesh adding 2M Middle-class consumers every year, total will be 34M by 2025. This growing group eager to consume higher brands goods/services but they are budget conscious. 

Fordo creates connected ecosystem of consumers, seller and marketer. User get assisted with personal analytics making time & cost efficient smart decision, seller and marketer gets direct sales lead and contextual marketing scope.

Bangladesh adding 2M Middle-class consumers every year, total will be 34M by 2025. This growing group eager to consume higher brands goods/services but they are also budget conscious and they are jumping onto the digital bandwagon. Consumers are still greatly depends on unorganized retail like local mom and pop shops (In Bengali Mudir Dokan). While organized retail coverage not much yet but gradually becoming popular and super shops are slowly turning those customers into their value chain. 

A consumer spends significant amount of time on cost-consumption management like Identifying needs, checking prices, planning budget, going shops, tracking expenses, etc. In that process because of lack of information and connectivity very often conflicts, poor decision and mismanagement causing waste of time and money to the consumer. 

On the other hand unorganized retail are losing their customers staying behind with there unstandardized service and lack of connectivity. They are  intending to deliver better quality service and products being digitally connected with consumers and stay in the fare competition with supermarkets and online shops. 

In the industry with a lack of proper marketing channel marketers can't reach to consumers at right context, consumers also missing attractive price & offers what they could capitalize.

Bangladesh adding 2M Middle-class consumers every year whose annual household income is $5,000 or more, total number of this consumer group will be 34M by 2025. This growing group eager to consume higher brands goods/services but they are also budget conscious and they are jumping onto the digital bandwagon. With this income consumer still needs to be organized and calculative with their expenses. According to survey consumers willing to list & track their expenses, check online for price and offers and they are interested to use technology to do so. 

Consumers of Bangladesh are still greatly depending on unorganized retail like local mom and pop shops (In Bengali Mudir Dokan). They are the quick and most time trusted choice within proximity. While organized retail is not in a wide coverage yet but gradually becoming popular and super shops are slowly turning customers into their value chain. presently organized retail market size is around BDT 1500 Crore and expected to grow 15 times by 2021. With this huge potentiality the organized retail industry still needs improvement to reach to the consumers with their offer and value. on the other hand unorganized retails needs standardisation and digitisation to offer better value and stay in fare competition.

By meaning 'Fordo' is a List, solution also designed based on list. At front fordo has a mobile application is helping user as a digital assistant.

1. Consumer can make list of items he/she wants to buy/spend to, thus he/she can be organized with his/her tasks. 
2. User can get market price & offers of those listed items so he/she can efficiently plan budget. 
3. The list is sharable and real time update enabled by cloud computing so the consumers are synchronized with family members or partners. 
4. Household can add items to the list remotely through IoT enabled smart buttons and smart home appliances so consumers can avoid mismanagement. 
5. Not necessarily consumers need to make at first but they can make there list of expenses later at their convenience so they can track expenses and do expense management.
6. User could capture receipt from shops and append to expense list so that user can digitize data automatically and be assisted with personal analytics. 
   1. A soft receipt may come from Fordo partner shop where a fordo PoS software is installed.
   2. User may also be able to capture hard copy receipt and append to expense list using image processing feature.     
7. Forecast list would be generated based on users consumption history and pattern so that user can take smart decisions.

Fordo also an integrator, integrates local shops, retails, services and marketers to create direct sales and marketing channel.

1. Unorganized retail shops can be connected with a virtual chain with standard, brand and digital connectivity.
2. With the smart PoS application and device unorganized retail shops can manage inventory and do regular sales using centrally managed product database.
3. Shops with smart PoS can receive online orders from nearby Fordo users, can provide home delivery service if they can manage so.  
4. Shops with Smart PoS can send soft receipt to Fordo, that could make many user choose shops with smart PoS who wish to do better expense management. 
5. Organized retail can use soft receipt module beside existing PoS or switch to smart PoS to attract customers using Fordo. 
6. Retails can bind voucher and membership program with Fordo giving consumers more flexibility and freedom. 
7. Retails can advertise offers and promotion to attract Fordo users.    
8. Fordo creates an excellent contextual marketing environment for the manufacturer and marketer to deliver their marketing content to right customer at the right time.

Fordo is unique, because it is not just a list management tool but it takes care end to end life cycle of an expense list:  Creating > Sharing > Executing > Cost & Quantity management > Analytics, Reporting & Forecasting.     

Fordo connects to numbers of Shops, Markets and enables the options like  Price & Offer query and compare, online ordering.

Fordo is not just  an Organizer  but  works as Smart Assistant with Analytics, Artificial Intelligent, and IoT. It is probably the only solution where user generated data directly been used for their own benefits like personal analytics and smart decision making. 

Fordo can be also scaled to assist in other daily activities. It can be integrated to any  other digital services. Having an in built wallet in fordo will make it complete and most powerful digital system for the consumers. 

Need of the market is clearly identified  through survey and research by both inhouse and global agency. Rising middle and affluent class (MAC) wants efficiency in their daily life consumption in order to keep their financial development positive. From the other aspect government of Bangladesh wants to continue their socio economic development through Digital Bangladesh Vision. Huge infrastructural development and skill development is ongoing with that vision. To be successful as a nation towards vision country needs more digital citizens who will be more fluent on using digital services and get better result out of it. Other hand there should be enough flexibility and freedom for any providers to connect to digital ecosystem with their products, services and offers.  

Total solution of Fordo will play a vital role for generating digital citizen, with their digital literacy they will be achieving happiness in their life through efficiency and also contributing to the socio economic development of the country. 

Fordo will standardize the unorganized retail industry and other stand alone service providers, add them to digital connectivity. Creates a orchestrated fairly competitive and transparent environment in the within the total industry.

Overall fordo brings efficiency in life, efficiency is good for society, economy and also for environment. 

Currently in pilot run, demo app available in Play Store, total download is 200k+, current active user is 250+. After Soft lunch targeted in december this year 10k+ user acquisition target in 1 month.

1 Million User Acquisition target by the end of 2020. 

By 2025 we should be shurving 10 MIllion users 

1 Million User Acquisition target by the end of 2020. At same time there will be minimum 1000 local shop will be connected in the platform with Smart PoS application and Frodo will be connecting at least two major supermarket chain of bangladesh by end of 2020.

By 2025 we should be connecting 10 Million users, 10,000 shops with Smart PoS. Most supermarket chain should be connected to Fordo. 70% consumer product price of the market should be regularly updated in Fordo.

By end of 2020 Fordo will be operating in another country (Malaysia) except Bangladesh. By 2025 Fordo should be in at least 5 other countries of Southeast Asia. 

Dependency on resource is the primary barriers for both short and long term accomplishment. To achieve properly what we have planned needs execution of different technology. Need skillful resource to execute perfectly and continue RND for continuous improvement on service and user friendliness. Current piloting version needs much improvement in order to engage more user interaction. 

Other hand market readiness is also a barrier, it is a challenge to make the users habituated with the technology solution and keep them engaging. 

We are collaborating with some of the better universities to engage talented resources for learning, working and researching with us. We are planning to keep our resource pipeline ready and build our capability to recruit and replace talented resource instantly when needed. 

Market readiness is always a challenge when service innovation is there. There has to be enough content available with solution benefits and user guideline. For attracting more and more users some reward based promotion campaign is planned. To keep the users engaging there are some social games included, also there will be a section for blog, news and informative content. Fordo will have a one to one chat function integrated for social usability. Within a short while digital wallet service will be implemented within Fordo, that will attract all type users with one stop services for most of expenses. 

Solution team is part of not large but other organization, name of the organization is Nitto Digital Service and Analytics Ltd. The organization is not big but 10 members team and mostly working for Fordo and another 2 startup. It also develop Android and Web application product for industry and client. Setcholdes of Fordo and NItto Digital are all same.  

Except from the C executives (CEO and CTO) in Fordo team currently One Android developers are working full time. Other than this 1 Sales Manager, 1 Software architect, 1 Back end developer, 1 web developer, 1 system integration engineer, 1 testing engineer and one UI/UX Designer are working part time. 

In the team CEO has 13 years sales and marketing experience in a fortune 500 ICT company, CTO has a wide range technology expertise for over 15 years.  And the other team members are mostly young and energetic. We are the team with mix of experience, skill and enthusiasm who are capable to achieve the target with excellence.

We are not yet partnering with any one but we are doing some integration testing with one or two local shops. 

Upto this level (successful pilot run) we have we come with personal level investment. From here needs funding for commercial run, growth and reaching to desire gole. Some grant from government or other organization would help to do more experiment and validation but in order to move first towards goal needs bigger investment. In the back we have several calculation one of that defines 1 million USD investment will bring the venture to breakeven in 36 months. Larger investment will definitely create greater impact in the market and capture large market share over quict period. 

Marketing and networking is part of the reasons we are applying in tiger challenge. But finding investor and collecting fund is the main reason for applying in tiger challenge.   

Most we want to partner with venture capital so we can get required fund in exchange of equity to make our venture successful and grow it bigger. But we are open to partner with any organization in a form cooperation and value sharing for the growth and positive impact to our venture.