Has your gadget run out of warranty? Extend it using ZurePro

My laptop just finished a year in my hands and lo and behold, it has conceived all the problems known to affect a laptop. Worst part of the deal - my laptop had run out of manufacturer's warranty.

How many of you have faced this problem before? Well, in a couple of months, Mumbai based ZurePro, will launch its extended warranty services. Essentially, you can pay a fee to ZurePro, and they’d cover your gadget's software and hardware damages.

We spoke with Mausumi Chakravorty, the co-founder and CMO of ZurePro to know more about the way in which the company works.

Startup born out of personal strife

Mausumi says that the startup was born out of her co-founder, Prakhar Saxena's personal strife. She says, “There was this period of time where every one of his devices kept having some problem or the other. Luckily his devices were under warranty so he got them replaced. But what about the ones that aren’t? That’s basically how we started out.”

Through partnership with 25 repair centers and 12 spare part vendors, ZurePro is all geared up for a June launch, when their plans of warranty extension for as long at 3 years will be on offering.

Now in its pre-launch phase, ZurePro is dry running its services with 15 clients that it has recently acquired. The cost of the warranty depends on the duration and the cost of the gadget; the costlier the gadget, the higher the cost of warranty.

Outreach techniques and financials

Young gadget users are the segment of interest for ZurePro, said Mausumi. “We have a couple of channels, which includes the conventional online marketing and events. Apart from this we are also taking part in relevant trade shows to reach out to our audience,” she says.

The company is bootstrapped and will be looking to raise an institutional round of funding in the near future. “Once we hit about 1000 customers, we will start reaching out to investors. We’ve set ourselves a target of 5 to 6 months to achieve this.

Good potential? Too soon to tell...

I think it is too early to predict how ZurePro would fare once it launches full-fledged operations. It is definitely addressing a need, but a lot depends on customer service and managing its partners. Mausumi shared that ZurePro has already tied up with logistics partners to work on a doorstep delivery system. This is great for customer satisfaction.

Usually, extended warranty is tied up with stores selling these devices, and Mausumi shared that such partnerships is there on a later stage of ZurePro's roadmap.

Here’s what’s interesting about this startup; there aren't many independent warranty providers based off the internet. It will be interesting to see how ZurePro fares in the coming months.

We’ll keep you posted with the latest updates from ZurePro.