RedKangaroo is a company that transforms brand loyalty with a sophisticated rewards platform. And the company empowers brand fans to promote their favorite brands and earn exclusive rewards and cashback through an innovative platform. Pulse 2.0 interviewed RedKangaroo CEO and founder Balaji Krishnan to learn more about the company.
Balaji Krishnan’s Background
Krishnan is a six-time serial entrepreneur and inventor with more than two decades of experience building new technology solutions and innovations for some of the most well-recognized tech companies in the world. And Krishnan said:
“I’m known for being a disruptor who takes seemingly impossible ideas and makes them a reality.”
“I’m also the founder and CEO of Displace, the world’s first truly wireless TV, which received multiple Best of CES awards in 2023; Frazy, a cafe-quality custom beverage startup; and Chill Theater, which is currently in stealth mode.”
“Prior to founding Displace, I founded two tech companies — DabKick and Snapstick — both of which were successfully acquired. DabKick won the ‘Best of CES’ award in 2020. Founded in 2011, Snapstick was a streaming device startup that was acquired by TiVo Corporation (formerly Rovi Corporation) in 2014.”
“Earlier in my career, I worked in the core technology groups at Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and Oracle building complex technologies like database transaction engine and operating systems kernel development.”
“I received a computer science engineering degree with honors from Anna University in India. I currently live in the Bay Area with my dog, Dabby, and like to play chess and ping pong in my spare time.”
Formation Of RedKangaroo
How did the idea for RedKangaroo come together? Krishnan shared:
“RedKangaroo was started purely from the need for an organic growth platform for my beverage startup Frazy.”
“At Frazy, we tested customer engagement by placing a message on our product to encourage our customers to take a picture of their Frazy bottle, post it on Instagram and add a hashtag. In return, our customer received an exclusive discount for 30% off on their next purchase. This worked really well, but our team had to manually track all the hashtags and then send customers the discount codes, which was a lot of work.”
“We wished there was a fully automated platform that can track such organic actions, where the users are automatically rewarded once the actions are done. We couldn’t find any such platform, so I decided to create one. RedKangaroo was born to let brands offer exclusive rewards to their users/customers, and the brands can define the actions to be performed in order to unlock those rewards. The RedKangaroo platform fully automates the process.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Krishnan reflected:
“RedKangaroo operates on two sides of the market – for both brands and users. As a result, we had to create a user experience that has zero friction on both sides. We did a lot of mocks and iterations to achieve this. My favorite memory is the process of defining the value proposition and working with the designers and product team to create a zero-friction user experience.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Krishnan explained:
“1.) Our core product is our destination website, where users will be able to discover different rewards from different brands and unlock them instantly by performing simple actions like sharing it with their friends via a simple text message or posting on Twitter, etc.
2.) We are also working on a Shopify app integration that will enable self-serve features for brands to define the rewards and the actions that users need to take to unlock the rewards.”
Challenges Faced
Has Krishnan faced any specific bottlenecks in his sector of work along the way? Krishnan acknowledged:
“I wouldn’t call it a bottleneck, but would define it as a business challenge on how to convince brands to work with RedKangaroo without having a wealth of data points to show the success of our brand new platform.”
“Currently, we are offering it for free for our early brand partners. We want to make it a frictionless experience for both brands and users so we can deliver the true value of RedKangaroo.”
Evolution Of RedKangaroo’s Technology
How has RedKangaroo’s technology evolved since launching? Krishnan noted:
“We iterated multiple versions of our product. We actually started with an iOS app, but quickly realized that downloading and managing apps is a huge friction for users, so we ported the experience to the web version – because users want instant gratification and don’t want to go through several steps to unlock a reward.”
“We also initially had ‘token-based’ redeeming for rewards, where users earned tokens from the brands by performing some actions and then used those tokens to unlock rewards. We changed it, however, to instant gratification of unlocking a reward by performing actions. This brings zero friction for users.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Krishnan cited:
“We launched an iOS app a month back and learned a lot as we were focusing on retail brands like coffee shops, spas, etc. We gathered a lot of data and quickly realized the importance of our platform for direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands.”
“We launched the web version of RedKangaroo targeting direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands on October 1, 2023.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Krishnan about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“It’s a bit too early as we still have a small data set, but approximately 250 rewards have been unlocked from different brands in just seven days. This means that users performed actions, like texting their friends, posting on social media, etc., to unlock the rewards. The rewards are mostly discounts on next purchases and this means more revenue for the brands.”
Funding
When inquiring about the company’s funding, I learned that RedKangaroo raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding from GFR Fund and Balaji Krishnan.
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Krishnan assessed:
“The small business ad market is around $300 million in size and we can play a significant role there.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Krishnan affirmed:
“We’re a fully automated platform that connects brands and users and instantly rewards users for their organic growth actions. This is significantly different from our competitors like Honey.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Krishnan pointed out:
“We plan to add more organic growth actions that can be done by users in order to increase the average order value (AOV) and revenue for the brands.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics to discuss? Krishnan concluded:
“We are currently targeting industries like Food & Beverage, Cosmetics and Pet Food, where the intent for repeat purchase is higher, but our goal is to bring RedKangaroo platform for all brands and create a close connection with their customers.”
