The Exchanges

Q That's the right, that's the right answer. All right, so tell us what, tell us what Mobstack does, and what's your revenue model? How do you make money?

A So MapStack is, uh, is a company which is basically trying to solve the online to offline, uh, divide. I think there are a lot of companies trying to do the same thing. Uh, what we're trying to do is use technologies like, uh, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, beacons, et cetera, in conjunction with your mobile device, uh, to what we call, uh, build an online style intelligence for the offline world. Uh, uh, what particularly has been growing for us has been, uh, one of our products called BeaconStack, which I would love to spend some time talking about, uh, which is, uh, which is a product, a SaaS based product, which basically uses the Bluetooth beacon technology, which allows any business to be able to do proximity based marketing and analytics. Uh, we charge businesses, uh, monthly, uh, subscription to be able to use our software to do this proximity marketing and analytics.

AI assessment note: “we charge businesses, uh, monthly, uh, subscription to be able to use our software”

Q they're doing what they shouldn't be doing, which is texting while driving. Well, if they have their phone open, you can send them a notification that says, hey, I know this is creepy, but, uh, the founder of Beacon is right next to you. Isn't it cool how I can market to you this way? Like, click here to buy your own Beacon. Is that kind of what you did?

A That's absolutely right. So one of the, one of the video testimonials that we have from one of our customers is a freelance artist who basically bought a kit of ours, takes one of these beacons, puts it in his, in his sachet or bag or wherever, who goes to these large events, and that, that beacon has been, uh, sending out notifications to all the other people in the event, and it says, there's a freelance artist available, look me up, I'm in this event hanging around, and I, I do these, and there's a link with his, uh, pictures, and He said he got a 3000 dollars, 3000 dollars, uh, contract using that at one of his events, so.

AI assessment note: “That's absolutely right. So one of the, one of the video testimonials”

Q Got it, got it. Okay, tell us more about the backstory here. What year did you launch the company in?

A So, uh, we have a longer backstory. So, we originally started the company in 2020 10. Uh, Mobstack has been a company that's been focusing on building, uh, products in the mobile space. Uh, we've pivoted to this business in about two years ago, when we basically, uh, realized that there's a huge opportunity for doing, uh, digital, uh, the, the bridge between the physical and the, uh, digital commerce, because The reality is irrespective of which market you take across the world. Uh, despite all the hype about e-commerce area, there's still most of the retail, uh, most of the business, uh, the retail selling all actually happens still offline about 90 to 90% of it happens offline. So we said there is really no way that the offline world is still not using any of the digital practices, the ability for you to retarget the ability for you to measure how many people are in stores.

AI assessment note: “we originally started the company in 2020 10.”

Q Okay. So what, give us a sense of kind of size of deals. I mean, what are people paying on average for the technology per month? And then give us a real example of a customer that's using it.

A Sure. So we have, uh, so Beacon Stack is basically, like I mentioned, it's, it's a, it's a, it's an MRR driven SaaS platform. What businesses do typically is, uh, use these Bluetooth beacons, uh, to be, that can be deployed into these physical store stores, and you can use our platform to run proximity marketing and analytics, uh, for, uh, targeting and sending the right notifications, coupons, offers, et cetera. So we have two plans. One is the 49 dollar plan and the other is a 99 dollar per month plan. This is just to kind of get started. Our revenue model is directly indexed to the number of beacons that are being actually deployed in any particular store or any physical location. And on average, it costs you about five dollars per beacon per month. So if you've deployed.

AI assessment note: “One is the 49 dollar plan and the other is a 99 dollar per month”

Q Oh, wow. Okay. So 10,000 beacons now, and who's responsible? I mean, I assume those things are actually made out of, like, metal and material and wire and stuff. Who's actually responsible for those costs? You guys or some other third-party provider?

A So it's, it's, that's a good question. So if you just kind of take a step back into the history of the way the market itself has evolved is, is, has been interesting, right? Because, so Mobstack is fundamentally our core IP is, is being a software company. When we initially built this product out about two years back, We were a hardware agnostic product, so it could essentially work with any beacon hardware out there. Okay. Uh, but, um, after six or six months, I think, uh, of putting it out there, we learned the hard way that the market still is in infancy. So as a business or a customer, it's very difficult for you to go, uh, procure hardware from a different source, then come back, look at software from someone else. And, uh, it's a more painful process. So we, we decided, uh, Why not just make it a one-stop shop? So we, uh, partnered with the Chinese OEM, and, uh, that's where the hardware is coming. We, we, we just basically source the OEM, source the hardware from there. Uh, the entire magic sauce is actually in the cloud, and that's, that's essentially what, uh, Ravi and, uh, team have actually built.

AI assessment note: “So we, we decided, uh, Why not just make it a one-stop shop?”

Q So wait, what does that mean? You put it in your car and like at a stoplight, anyone around your car will just automatically get a notification? How, how do they, how do they get that?

A So that's, that's a very good question, right? So one of the fundamental things that's happened, uh, with respect to the market itself is that, uh, when, when the beacon technology launched and, you know, Apple kind of made iBeacon available for all our operating systems, the limiting factor for that was the fact that you actually needed an app on your device, uh, for you to be able to kind of, you know, interact with the beacons that are there in these physical locations. Um, that was kind of, uh, uh, was a, was a showstopper in some sense because most of these physical businesses who really were excited about it, whether it's consumers want to install the app.

AI assessment note: “the limiting factor for that was the fact that you actually needed an app”