How ApnaKlub Turned 30,000 Wholesale Buyers into a Loyal, Revenue-Generating Community Delivering ~62x ROI

ApnaKlub is a B2B wholesale platform digitising FMCG distribution across rural and semi-urban India, connecting 400+ FMCG brands directly with kirana store owners through a mobile-first, app-based model. Where traditional distribution locked out small retailers with minimum order requirements and opaque pricing, ApnaKlub opened the door: flexible order quantities, competitive wholesale prices, and doorstep delivery built for Bharat’s retail reality.

The business scaled fast, revenue grew 92.9% to ₹537 crore in FY24, backed by Tiger Global, Sequoia’s Surge, and Blume Ventures, with a user base exceeding 30,000 buyers across UP, Bihar, Uttarakhand, and beyond.

As ApnaKlub scaled across Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets, the platform had solved the supply problem. What it hadn’t solved was communication.

The kirana buyer in Lucknow or the wholesale retailer in Patna is not an impulse purchaser. They operate on tight margins, deliberate buying cycles, and deep price awareness. They don’t browse for fun – they buy when the timing, the margin, and the inventory align. And they decide fast: in their vernacular language, on WhatsApp, on a budget Android phone.

Generic catalogue blasts and English push notifications were landing with a thud – not because the offers weren’t good, but because the communication didn’t speak the language of the person receiving it. Three fault lines emerged:

1. Catching the Buyer at the Right Moment

Intent was never the problem. The challenge was showing up at the exact moment they were ready to act – not blasting them at random and hoping the timing worked out.

2. Staying Relevant Across 30,000 Different Buying Patterns

No two wholesalers restock the same way. Sending everyone the same message wasn’t just ineffective, it was invisible.

3. Breaking the English-Centric SaaS Barrier

A wholesaler in Bihar doesn’t think in English. A Hindi notification showing a live margin figure and a product image lands in a completely different universe from a plain-text English push.

Netcore deployed a comprehensive engagement strategy built on four interconnected pillars – combining intelligent automation, personalisation at scale, and vernacular-first communication to address every layer of ApnaKlub’s challenge.

01 Multi-Channel Approach Unified messaging across App Push, SMS, Email, WhatsApp, RCS, and Web Push

02 Smart Push Activation Intelligent, rich-media push notifications triggered on user activity signals

03 Personalised Messaging Vernacular, product-specific messages tailored to each wholesaler’s behaviour

04 Journey Orchestration Re-engagement flows targeting lapsed users with variant-tested campaigns

Strategy Implementation Precision Crafted, Campaign by Campaign

WhatsApp & RCS – Conversational Commerce at Scale ApnaKlub used WhatsApp to deliver time-sensitive offers – including the Republic Day Cashback Mahotsav – with tiered cashback incentives (0.5% to 1.5%) based on purchase value, speaking directly in the register of a kirana buyer. RCS enabled richer nudges like the Holi Margin Booster – seasonal relevance combined with a direct Hindi CTA, all within the native SMS inbox with no app install required.

Rich Vernacular Push Notifications Netcore’s Smart Push campaigns delivered image-led Hindi notifications showcasing live deal pricing, margin percentages, and product imagery. A notification showing ‘52% margin live – ₹21.46 deal’ in Hindi with a product image is not the same as a text alert saying ‘New deal available.’ One is a business conversation. The other is noise.

Re-Engaging Lapsed Wholesalers Inactive users (90+ days) were segmented by past browsing and purchase behaviour. Personalised push notifications were triggered with products they were most likely to buy, with A/B variant testing built in – enabling continuous optimisation without manual intervention.

SKU-Based Product Recommendations Netcore’s recommendation engine analysed past purchases to suggest relevant restock and cross-sell products for buyers inactive 30+ days – reducing decision time, growing basket size, and shifting ApnaKlub from generic catalogue blasts to individualised product conversations at scale.

The Netcore partnership delivered measurable, transformational results across ApnaKlub’s most critical engagement and revenue metrics.

These are the headline metrics. But read in context, they say something more important than campaign performance. They say that a B2B platform serving semi-urban India – communicating with buyers who were never the intended audience of most engagement tools – can generate returns that rival what consumer brands achieve with far larger budgets.

The ~62x ROI wasn’t produced by discounting harder or spending more. It was produced by showing up in the right language, on the right channel, with the right product, at the right moment. That is, by definition, what great marketing is. It just hadn’t been applied here before.