Co-founder Pooja Sodhi on how Combonation, a combo-deal company,  capitalizes on people’s affinity for bundled offers, creating a win-win for both retail partners and customers

While most brands use deals and discounts as a strategy to boost sales, Combonation, a 2022-founded Delhi-based startup, has built a whole business model around the concept. 

Combonation partners with various brands to make product bundles, which are a combination of different products, and sells them at a discounted retail price. The concept seems to be picking up as is evident from its performance figures—the August 2022-launched omnichannel retailer has been growing 10% month-on-month from December 2022 to May 2023, according to the co-founder.

Currently, it is has 22 stores across the North India and has onboarded 350 brands including Renee, Biotique, Furr, Bella Vita Organic, Vahdam and more.

In an exclusive interaction with IndiaRetailing, Pooja Sodhi, co-founder and chief executive officer of Combonation speaks about the company’s concept, growth, expansion plans and more. 

Tell us about the concept of Combonation.

Combonation is both, an e-commerce and an offline retailer. The concept is that we sell everything in combos—curated combos as well as customised combos. 

While the pre-curated combos are heavily discounted, if customers create their own bundles, they get freebies. 

All the products available are from different brands across various categories including beauty, fashion, home décor and health. 

What is the idea behind your model?

Today, it is important to be present on offline as well as online retail channels. This is because while online retail channels help a brand reach a vast audience, offline retail channels help get actual sales. 

So, the biggest challenge for a brand is price parity between online and offline channels. Through Combonation, we are helping retailers disguise their prices. Through the combo offers, the consumers can’t make out which brand is providing discounts.

We created this company to help retailers give discounts to their customers without actually revealing the prices. 

You have collaborated with how many brands?

Currently, we have more than 350 brands onboard with us. We have collaborated with several big brands including Maybelline, Lakme, Renee, Colorbar, T.A.C. -The Ayurveda Company and many more. We have also collaborated with several D2C brands like GoodGlam Group, Bare Anatomy and more. We keep onboarding new brands almost every day.

How has the company grown since its inception?

Being a startup, the company’s growth trajectory has been good. In the last six months, we have grown 10% on a month-on-month basis. We aim to reach a Rs 300 crore turnover by next year and are working rapidly to achieve this target.

In terms of retail stores, we have grown to a total of 22 stores across North India and are planning to expand further.

We got into offline retail space with a store in Greater Kailash, M Block Market in South Delhi and since then, have expanded rapidly. 

Recently, we opened a store in Dwarka and two of our stores are going to launch soon in Gurugram, one at Paras Trinity and the other at Good Earth City Centre. The store in Good Earth City Centre will be run completely by transgenders.

What are your marketing strategies?

Marketing strategies are extremely important to boost sales and increase reach. We ran a campaign called ‘Garmi Karde Fail Summer Sale’. This campaign did well and got us huge traffic last month. 

Other than this, we are currently advertising on Zee TV and keep running various schemes and campaigns. We rely on hoardings, digital marketing, out-of-home advertising (OOH) and other mediums to connect with our audience. 

What technological advancements have you adopted?

We use artificial intelligence to monitor buying behaviour and create bundles accordingly. 

Furthermore, we have introduced the grab-and-go concept at our Akshardham outlet. The customer can order online while in transit and can collect the products at the store. Soon we will introduce it to our stores at other metro stations and airports as well.

What are your expansion plans?

Our plan is to open 100 stores by the end of this financial year and have 1000 stores in the next three years. 

Currently, we are only present in North India where our focus is Delhi NCR and Punjab due to a great response from these areas. However, we are looking to expand to West and East India as well. Our focus is to expand to metro cities and tier 2 cities for now.