It pays to be loyal!
It pays to be loyal!

Companies have resorted to various privilege programs in order make the employees feel taken care of. benefitsPLUS is one such leading player that successfully manages Employee privilege programs for hundreds of corporate allowing employees to shop and save money across a large variety of products and services that affects their lifestyle. We have Mr. Vikramjit Singh Sahaye, head of Marketing & Operations for benefitsPLUS, who highlights the growing need of companies to address the challenges of bringing delight to their customers, employees and channel partners.  

AS: Talk us through benefitsPlus, its services and programs?

VSS: As employees, we spend most of the time at our workplace. The employers face a continuous challenge of balancing compensatory increments to match the lifestyle requirements of employees and keep them motivated. The HR departments are looking at means to stretch the power of Rupee for employees and innovate in the rewards system to bring delight to employees. Keeping this in mind, we’ve created a close-group e-commerce platform and convert it to a privilege program, which contains special deals from leading brands only for the employees. This is a completely managed, white-labeled employee engagement program and hence presented as the company’s own program for their employees.

The platform is accessible from the workplace and has a wide range of products from leading brands across segments such as mobiles, appliances, gadgets, electronics, travel, food & dining, fashion and lots more. The offers and privileges however are secured and only meant for employees of benefitsPLUS’ clients. benefitsPLUS partners with HR to drive engagement In employee savings, R&R (Rewards & recognition), gifting and even corporate merchandise.

AS: What is the role of loyalty programs that you undertake? How is it benefitting them?

VSS:   There are two parts to this proposition. Firstly, HR promotes these programs as their own platform to their employees having their own brand name, such as the “Wipro Advantage” for Wipro employees and “My Exclusive Privileges” for Essar group employees. We provide end-to-end solutions to the enterprise for their employees, where a person is issued an access to a platform, personalize the program,  provide a wide range of products with exclusive deals, ensures proper fulfillment of orders, prove customer service and give real-time intelligence reports to HR. Secondly we have very good content, where our  brand alliances such as Aircel, Kuoni, Blackberry, Goibibo, Sony, Barista, VLCC and many more who offer special offers for this segmented corporate platform. We give them the provision to target customers to give differentiated offerings and .increase market share

AS: You are primarily catering to the employees, why is that so?

VSS: Our platform is highly scalable and easy to integrate. Therefore, in addition to Employee privilege programs, we undertake customer-loyalty programs with certain telecom & banking players and also manage Channel partner R&R programs. From the open consumer space, we’ve recently acquired Koovs.com which is amongst the fastest growing B2C ecommerce companies in the country.

AS: What is your view of the online shopping in India? How has it evolved over the years?

VSS: If you look at the internet penetration figures in India, there is a humongous scope for growth, which is visible to everybody. Over the years, apart from internet penetration, the acceptability of internet as a medium to research and make a purchase for lifestyle products & regular local services has increased significantly. Having said that, e-commerce has also become an integral part of the marketing strategies for most brands and benefitsPLUS provides them the opportunity reach the corporate segment nationally.

AS: With a wide range of brands present in the e-commerce vertical now, how have you differed from them with your products & services?

VSS: I always maintain that there are 3 important reasons why somebody would shop online; these are “Convenience”, which means buying and having it delivered at your door-step. Secondly, the “Range” of products that you get, for e.g. if you go to traditional shop you will not get the whole range of products, which is available on the internet, because there is no requirement of actually stocking it before showing it.  Finally it’s the ”Pricing”; it should be attractive and is kept so on the e-commerce space. At benefitsPLUS, we’d like to believe that we are adequately aggregating a wide range of brand offers and cater to all these needs.

AS: What has been your role in bringing in benefitsPLUS into India?

VSS: benefitsPLUS is an Indian company and evolves from a need that we realized. Today, we are catering to over 100 companies and reaching out to half a million employees, with a total reach is 20 million and growing.

AS: Could you enlighten us about the programs that you offer?

VSS: Under benefitsPLUS, we undertake programs for three key segments. ”Employees, “Customers” and “Channel partners” for corporate. Prominent sectors amongst our clients are IT, Telecom, Banking & Insurance.

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