“Go paperless. The innovative technology Green Till offers digital receipts to ease environmental concerns as well as the weight in our wallets.”
An innovative design to completely change the idea of paper receipts into digital has been introduced by 3 engineers with the app Green Till.
This design is a great service to the environment as well as to everyone all around. There would be no need of securing the receipt lest there be a chance we might need it for a refund or replacement. No heavy wallets or purses, no bunches of receipts stacked together for later.
“Green Till is a technological innovation to go paperless by storing all receipts digitally.”
Green Till, a start-up based in Ireland was founded by Gokul Gurijala, Pranay Madanala, and Ankit Patil. They developed this app in order to reduce paper waste, which would go a long way in helping retailers and customers in multiple ways.
Background
Gokul Gurijala is a QA (Quality Assurance) and project manager by profession and a passionate product designer and process inventor. Pranay is a cyber security professional with a strong telecom and networking background and Ankit is a data analyst with great retail experience.
“These 3 brilliant minds have come together to bring a massive change in the tech world. The idea ‘Go paperless’, though seems simple, will have a positive impact all around.”
How Green Till Was Formed
Be it consumer privacy, the retailer’s ease of operation, or its effect on the environment, the scope of Green Till is huge.
The founders of Green Till felt that even though our lives are ruled over by technology, the idea of using receipts has not changed much in the past thousands of years. Everywhere around the world, paper receipts are widely used.
“If we imagine receipts in the next 5 years, the answer is digital and there is no established solution in the market so far.
That is why Green Till is trying to get consumers interested in the issue of replacing paper receipts with digital ones.”
As we look around and see, technology has taken over our daily lives, be it shopping, work, or money. Perhaps, receipts are the only place where technology hasn’t intervened in a revolutionary way.
Initially, their idea was to develop an app for storing all receipts digitally. But soon they realized the drawback of this idea was that unless retailers offered receipts digitally there is no way this could be effective.
Then they came up with Green Till POP, where retailers can plug and play POP to offer digital receipts. Consumers using the Green Till mobile app will save all their paper receipts from any retailer in one place.
The App-Green Till
‘We had been working on various ideas for a long time, but nothing seemed convincing and didn’t seem like a problem worth solving until we stumbled upon the digital receipts idea’, says Gokul.
“Once we conceived the idea, there was no looking back. We were building prototypes the following day and within a month we were doing market validation of the product.”
When tap to pay was launched it didn’t take long for consumers to adapt to it. How many of us email receipts? Which is the only digital option as of today.
So, we decided this was a safe bet and started working on commercializing the product and making it viable for retailers.
‘Our app has the functionality to manage all receipts. You can import existing receipts as well as take photos among other things ‘, says Ankit. In India, we have one client: farmers and grocers but our focus is on the Irish market. We also build customer loyalty programs for retailers.
Acceptance From The Industry
“For many retailers, the first question when we pitched Green Till was: how long will it disrupt my tills?
And our answer was less than five minutes and that is only because we want to ensure everything is hooked-in correctly.”
Pranay says, ‘The retail industry is slow to adapt to changes when legacy technology is involved. Card payments, payments via tap, modern EPoS systems, everything takes time. And in our research, we found the reason for this was the amount of change involved and the cost and risk associated with the change to legacy tech. This causes retailers to carefully consider change and options for change.’
We addressed this as we lay our foundations. We wanted our digital receipts solution to be plug and play, no matter what. And we achieved it. For many retailers, the first question when we pitched Green Till was: how long will it disrupt my tills?
“Selling this as an idea and now as a product has been an uphill task, taking into account the product is way more cost effective compared to printing receipts on paper.”
And our answer was less than five minutes and that is only because we want to ensure everything is hooked-in correctly. Retailers love the fact that this is plug-and-play, and the cherry on top of the cake is that we are changing loyalty forever.
Every retailer counts on their loyal consumers for promotions which are only 20-30% of their store traffic, so the remaining 70-80% of business comes from walk-in consumers that retailers have no idea about whatsoever.
Green Till lays a direct channel to this 70-80%. Retailers love it, consumers can’t believe they no longer have to keep paper receipts, feel guilty about printing receipts, or bear losses for oversized clothes or broken electrical items at home just because they have lost the receipt.
There is no way this happens with Green Till.
“Consumers can keep all their receipts gathered in the Green Till Receipts app, for as long as they wish, and at any time search for receipts, products they have bought, and stores they have visited in the past. Also, consumers can add their loyalty cards to the app, so they no longer need to carry them in their wallets all the time.”
Challenges Faced
Gokul, Pranay, and Ankit feel it incredibly difficult to reach out to the right person in a retail organization who can listen to their pitch and make a decision about the app.
Since none of them are from a sales background, selling this as an idea and now as a product has been an uphill task, taking into account that the product is way more cost-effective compared to printing receipts on paper.
The Future
They are planning to launch the product direct to retailers with full-on sales campaigns by the end of the year. Expensive payment processing systems will be replaced with Green Till terminals where payments and digital receipts issues will be completed in a single QR scan/NFC tap.
They also have “scan and go” features on their horizon for the years that follow 2022.