Plug and Play’s CEO Corner: Saurin Shah, Sift

Plug and Play helps bring together retailers and startups who offer specific technology and expertise that can relieve their pain points. In each issue of our Customer Disruption e-newsletter, we will provide you a brief Q&A with the CEO of a Plug and Play startup, explaining how their company assists retailers in succeeding in today’s disruptive customer environment.



This week’s CEO Corner features three questions with Saurin Shah, CEO of Sift.



What does your company do?

Sift turns retail email marketing into a fun, addictive experience on the phone. Sift's "virtual mall" experience aggregates all of a user's promotions in one place, making it easy for retailers to engage their users on mobile devices.



How do retailers leverage your solution?

Sift provides an instant, out-of-the-box mobile marketing channel for retailers, doing for mobile what companies like ExactTarget and Responsys do for email. If the retailer has an email marketing strategy, then they can use Sift to reach their customers on mobile with minimal setup cost.



Through Sift's Shopper Insights analytics platform, Sift provides retailers and companies a cross-merchant view of their shoppers based on real-habit and purchase based data that can be used to improve CRM, personalization of marketing material and ecommerce content, and marketing optimization.



What is your background as CEO and/or what lead to the development of the company?

I am a serial entrepreneur, who started his first company in high school. My first startup was a precursor to MySpace called Trax In Space - a social network for musicians and their fans to share and buy music. Prior to Sift, I was the VP of Social Games at Digital Chocolate, a leading Facebook and mobile social game developer founded by Trip Hawkins (founder, Electronic Arts). I helped the company to multiple #1 iPhone games as well as top Facebook social games. With a strong background in consumer-facing mobile apps, I wanted to apply my experience to mobile commerce, where I felt Sift could reduce the friction between retailers and their customers on mobile devices.

Shah can be reached at [email protected].