Jul 20, 2018
From courses to remedies, startup gives discounts of up to 87% and conquers giants
Allya was voted the most attractive startup in the 100 Open Startups ranking. The deal wants to “make the salary of employees render more”
The biggest problem for large companies is not to create a brilliant strategy against competition or keep accounting controls up to date. Incredibly, the Achilles heel of corporations is giving benefits that employees really find valuable.
The startup stands as a great “collaborative network”. The description is puzzling, but has already conquered companies like Accenture and Kroton. With 21 thousand establishments offering promotions to 230 thousand registered employees. Of 500 companies, Allya earned a million reais in 2017. This year, it wants to triple the amount collected.
How it works?
Entrepreneurs Gustavo Antonelli, Marco Ferelli and Rogério Nogueira realized in practice how difficult it is for a large company to create personalized benefits for employees. The HR area of the company where Ferelli worked, restricted to various processes and legislations, spent weeks negotiating benefits with some nearby establishment.
The partner witnessed the employee talk with the human resource managers and realized mistakes on both sides. While HR was not thinking about solutions to delayed partnerships, employees were unaware of the company’s agreements — and the benefits they had.
The Collaborators was born in 2015, after interviews with 150 human resources professionals about their pains and possible solutions. They wanted a time-saving service while at the same time delivering personalized benefits to employees with easy access and disclosure of benefits.
After an angel investment of 250 thousand reais, was born a smartphone application that discloses fortnightly the best deals for each employee of the company. Both geolocation data and a startup algorithm are used, fed by information provided by the user.
A director of a large company, for example, receives promotions in restaurants more exquisite than a junior analyst. It is possible to indicate establishments to join the platform, and in that sense the startup claims to be a “collaborative network” — the users themselves help to expand the service and “make people’s salary pay more.”
The business recently changed its name to Allya — the idea is to refer to an “allied” initiative of employees. It now has 21,000 establishments with promotions of various sizes in various services such as gyms, e-commerces, language schools, MBA courses, parking lots, gift shops, gas stations, restaurants and beauty salons. Discounts can go from 10% (restaurants) to 87% (medicines). Some listed establishments are Cinemark, Cultura Inglesa, Drogaria São Paulo, Estácio, Farmais, Flores Online, Imaginarium, Movida, Netshoes, Onodera Estética and Petz.
An employee with salary of 1 920 reais saves, on average, 215 reais by Allya. Those who have a higher purchasing power and ask for discount in a course, for example, can save more than 300 reais every month.
A major difference from startup to common benefits is that employees do not just have one or another discount, but they can choose which benefit is the most attractive in every moment of life. Through their own smartphone, they can know advantages and receive personalized alerts. Today, the startup has 230 thousand registered users.
According to Nogueira, one of Allya’s partners, another link benefited from the chain are the establishments, fomenting neighborhood entrepreneurship. “They can be found more easily and retain loyal and recurring customers, who are usually close. There are no costs like leaflet printing, which can get into the hands of anyone. “
Startup does not charge these partners — in addition to the margin they lose on promotions, of course, which vary by establishment (lower tuition fees, cheap prices at idle time, among other actions).
Allya earns money from corporations interested in benefiting their employees in a flexible and personalized way, with a cost per employee ranging from cents (in the case of business with thousands of members) to 15 reais (in the case of companies with up to 20 members). There are 500 contracting companies, such as Accenture, Kroton and the Cooperativa do Pão de Açúcar.
Plans
In 2017, the business earned a million reais — five times more than the one seen in 2016. For this year, the goal is to reach three million reais. The startup wants to invest even more in the data collected from the profiles, personalizing the best offers through artificial intelligence. Once the employee enters the Allya app, you’ll see only the most relevant promotions. The AI system was launched last week and will undergo testing by the end of this year.
The startup does not rule out the contribution of an investment fund to accelerate such plans — having its 32 employees in Cubo, the coworking space of Itaú Unibanco, contributes to the contact with possible contributors. Being considered the most attractive startup for large companies is, of course, another big boost for Allya. And for more discounts, expect employees.
