?Technology unfolds franchise opportunities

Franchise model is growing rapidly for business expansion across all sectors. And technology is playing a vital role in strengthening the franchise network. Technology helps the franchisee and the franchisor to grow faster while creates a win-win situation to both the parties.

Vyomo, an aggregator of beauty salon doorstep services will become a part of Naturals investing Rs 100 crore for a controlling stake. The collaboration of a brick and-mortar salon chain with an app-based beauty services aggregator, will give Naturals an entry into the on-demand beauty services space. Vyomo, which will be renamed Naturals@ Home, will get access to a large pool of stylists and wider reach.

"We get access to 7,500 Naturals stylists at almost no incremental cost with this deal. We were lacking in the salon experience but post this deal, we will have the capacity be able to service 25,000 customers a day," said Abhinav Khare, Founder, Vyomo to Economic Times.

However, CK Kumaravel, CEO & Co-founder, Naturals extended its say to ET, “Almost 30 per cent of the beauty business is now moving to home services. We have been salon specialists but we realised that on demand services are playing a very important role in the beauty space now. Since, we ourselves don't understand the back end and how the tech space works, the deal with Vyomo opens up a completely new opportunity for us."

Cafe Coffee Day will also launch a new mobile phone app that will allow customers to pre-order beverages before reaching cafes and pay through mobile wallets. “Not just us, technology disruption is coming to every aspect of a consumer’s life”, said Bidisha Nagaraj, Group President, to Livemint.

Similarly, now Micromax wants to revamp the brand strategy, which is a five point for the next five years. The brand unveils new logo and 19 products under its umbrella.

Therefore, many brands keep innovating like management apps, improved customer-loyalty programs and even digital signboards to transform the franchise world.