Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The Pitch

Sayagle joins daily deals market, seeks $6M funding

By Lynette F. Cornell

Sayagle Inc.
Headquarters: Cambridge
Phone: 857-928-2462
Email: khuang@sayagle.com
URL: www.sayagle.com
Founded: 2009
Employees: 22

In the company’s own words:
“Sayagle Inc. is an early stage location-based social marketplace, both in web and mobile platforms, designed to be a win-win-win arrangement for users, merchants and charity organizations. Users can make the most of their daily spending with Sayagle’s exclusive local deals and its proprietary global recurring rewards program and giveaways. Merchants, on the other hand, gain access to promotional and customer loyalty tools that drive local traffic in real time. Sayagle’s patent pending charity donation method enables partner charities to collect receipts from Sayagle’s growing merchant network instead of asking people for cash donations.”

About the technology:
Sayagle provides location-based deals from local merchants to its users through both mobile devices and web-based browsers. Users can filter the deals to find the most relevant ones for them based on price, distance and type of product or service. The company currently has over 300 Boston area companies enrolled in the program. The company also offers SayaCash, a customer loyalty program for users, who are able to earn 5 percent cash back when shopping with participating merchants. Merchants are billed 7 percent of the purchase price, with Sayagle keeping 2 percent as a commission. Users can also choose to donate their cash rewards to a charity through Sayagle’s SayaCharity program, whereby merchants collect the receipts of the users who choose to donate their cash rewards. The platform also provides real-time customer survey and analytics information for merchants. The company is projecting a net profit of negative $1.1 million for 2011, with the expectation of a net profit of $9.8 million in 2012.

People behind the company:
Ken Huang, president, CEO and founder of the company, previously co-founded WebNotes Inc., a digital data organization company, where he still serves on the board of directors. Anthony Do serves as the IT director. Mikhail Koryak is the lead software engineer and was formerly a senior UI developer at Boston-based CrunchTime! Information Systems Inc. Bob Eovine is the vice president of engineering. Ethan Chen is a regional sales director specializing in the Asian-American market in the U.S. Other key members include sales and marketing specialist Charles Huang, human resource manager Helen Chang and sales specialist David Firenze.

The pitch:
The company is seeking $6 million for business strategy rollout, sales, marketing, complete business team formation, company branding and promotions. The company is also seeking business partnerships with companies that have deep influences in any business sector including in e-commerce or digital domains.

The market:
Sayagle is tapping into multiple markets, most specifically the customer coupon market, which Huang estimates is worth $300 billion worldwide. Other markets that the company is pursuing include online and mobile advertising, virtual goods, e-commerce, credit cards, loyalty programs and charitable donations.

The competition:
According to Huang, the company’s competition includes coupon providers, loyalty program services, online advertising and mobile advertising companies.