Mohammad Imthiaz founded Y2CF Digital Media 2010 after leading telecom services operator Bharti Airtel’s non voice business for seven years. The Gurgaon-headquartered company’s first product, hoppr, a location-based service, was launched last May. Just a month after the service was launched, Bharti SoftBank (BSB), a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank Corp, picked up a 49.74 per cent stake in Y2CF with an option to increase its holding up to 60 per cent in tranches over a three-year period, according to Medianama. In the past 12 months, hoppr, says Imthiaz, has racked up more than 4.5 million users and nearly 10,000 merchants. The numbers beg the question: what’s the fuss all about? This morning I decided to give hoppr a spin and found myself facing a mildly vexing problem. I had to decide on throwing good money after bad coffee either at a Barista or a Cafe Coffee Day outlet, both just a few steps from my home. After picking the lesser of two evils, I settled down at Barista, and dispatched an SMS saying ‘Barista’ to the toll-free shortcode 56660. This is how you ‘check in’ when you are at a restaurant or cafe or spa that has a tie-up with hoppr. I was a full 12 minutes into my coffee when I got a message from hoppr — “You checked into Barista and got 1000 pts…”. So, here’s how hoppr works. If you are using the SMS-based service, you need to register your mobile number and then simply…
