We recently sat down with Subodh (Sid) Jain, President of Crimson & Mauve Inc. to learn more about the company and their newest project – Grocery Wiz.
How did you come up with your company name?
The name Crimson & Mauve signifies balance of power & creativity. May my creative side take me to businesses of education or fashion, adventure or non profit, Crimson & Mauve is a name that will carry all my projects along.
The name Grocery Wiz designates something genius –that targets homemakers, busy professionals as well as the corporate giants. Therefore, this app needed an inspiration to be unusually intelligent & clever, hence the name Grocery Wiz.
What Products/services do you provide?
Being among the first few in 2001 attempting to sell books online, now I am an accredited marketplace seller on Amazon and many other portals. In a collaborative effort I created a Spanish version of an iPhone app that was a test prep for U.S. DMV, and now aiming at Arabic and other languages for new immigrants into Canada and U.S. I run a professional IT infrastructure creating tools for inventory management, re pricing & Analytical tools for online seller, but not limited to development of Apps, websites, back end management, etc.
Anything new and exciting happening within your company?
I am among those who can’t continue doing one same thing every day. Therefore, I wake up every day with a new idea, that makes me the Business Development officer of my company. As any other great ideas, our latest project – Grocery Wiz – was conceived and proofed on my kitchen table, rather on my refrigerator door. Supported with my Son and Daughter –both engineers, we have a complete blue print of this app from beta version to top rankings on Google play and appstore.
What is Grocery Wiz?
Grocery Wiz is an app aimed at digitizing paper scraps of shopping lists on the refrigerator and classify them according to store locations, deals, coupons and budget. Your smart devices will mean a lot more than just expensive entertainment. While other developers are pumping 1000s of programming hours making apps to sell grocery online, we are aiming to make the customer ready for shopping. With plenty of features & tools, the shopper will consolidate the wish list of entire family, the kitchen, the dog, the garage, etc. at one place, then split the list according to stores or malls, insert quantities, how much to buy, when. It will be an inventory control system in your hands, without looking like one.
We are not aiming at riding on the traffic of Walmart or Loblaws, but instead we will contribute our original traffic of aware, tech savvy and professional consumer whose time is too precious for grocery shopping.
This app will fetch you price comparisons of different retailers, discounts & coupons of 8 Million household items available in N. America in their original name spelling, bar code and clear ordering information, and help you take the most informed decisions with control upon over-spending and redundant shopping.
We are aiming at 5 Million downloads at launch and earn revenue even without any cooperation of the mass market retailers. Instead of competing with Walmart, Amazon or Google, this app will rather supplement their huge national grocery selling programs which they have announced.
What tech gadget or resource (i.e. blog, magazine, online tool, app, Youtube video, etc) has played a role in growing your company?
Google is the primary and dependable tool in conceiving and proofing, but I diligently attend conferences and associations to get first hand account of what’s trending and what will make sense.
What idea do you have to help accelerate our local Tech community. Tell us in 140 characters. We’ll tweet it!
Writing the program is no rocket science anymore. An app is based upon a demographic driven by culture, preferences and habits. Therefore, the local students will do the job best once they have awareness of the Project and appreciation of the purpose.
Why did you join WEtech Alliance?
WEtech provided me a business networking platform, access to investors, inventors and their methods and strategies. WEtech has further suggested executive development programs at epicenter, OCE & BDC for my young partners who are right out of college i.e. my son and daughter to get them skills to build and refine their ideas into a viable business plan.
