Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Samar Singla, CEO of Click-Labs (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you are producing these kinds of applications also for large companies. Is the McDonald’s example a real example?

Samar Singla: McDonald’s is not a real example. We have done something for Coca-Cola. We have done two marketplaces for them. I cannot disclose the projects. They are, very soon, going to be in public domain. You might have heard of this Coca-Cola entrepreneur program. They just started doing press releases about it. Before that, nobody knew about that. We are one of their suppliers. We do most of their technology for that program. A lot of those products are actually marketplaces.

Sramana Mitra: Across the board in your large customer base, are you seeing a lot of demand for these marketplace kinds of apps?

Samar Singla: Yes, that’s true. The part of the bigger trend is, people don’t want to hire people. Companies don’t want to hire people on their payroll, but rather want to have an elastic workforce. That’s a big trend. Then, on-demand services being provided by bigger companies is a big trend.

Sramana Mitra: Are there segments where you’re seeing this kind of one-sided marketplaces where large companies are trying to harness a fluid flexible workforce using these kinds of apps?

Samar Singla: It’s not just workforce but different type of things. For example, companies like Cisco would want to launch a marketplace where people could trade old equipment. Even though it doesn’t give them much revenue, it just gives them a little bit of PR.

Sramana Mitra: What do they want to trade?

Samar Singla: Old Cisco equipment. This is a big trend in cars. All the companies actually have their own old car dealerships. That’s the big trend, which is moving on to these marketplaces.

Sramana Mitra: They’re doing branded marketplaces. For example, an Audi would do their own branded marketplace.

Samar Singla: It’s not a pure marketplace, because it’s only open for Audi products. They’re trying to do it because they have to compete with marketplaces. They are more curated marketplaces, I would say.

Sramana Mitra: You’re saying that this is across different verticals. It’s happening all over the place. You talked about cars. You talked about Cisco and Coca-Cola. There is no vertical trend. It’s all over the place.

Samar Singla: It is pretty much all over the place. The way it works in almost every category is very different. For example, the car is not instant. McDonald’s is instant. The nature changes a lot depending on what vertical it is. But yes, the trend is there. As I told you the components at the beginning, there is almost no marketplace where all the components will be used.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Samar Singla, CEO of Click-Labs
1 2 3 4 5