Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Gurgaon, SingleInterface has become Asia’s leading retail tech platform, supporting over 400 enterprise brands across sectors like F&B, automotive, telecom, BFSI, real estate, education, and healthcare. The company helps businesses maximize their physical storefronts’ potential in today’s digital-first landscape.
Recently, SingleInterface launched SingleInterface AI, a groundbreaking full-stack AI software suite built for multi-location storefronts. This marks their shift from digital-first to AI-first, enabling brands to transform customer discovery and engagement hyperlocally—at every store, pin code, and touchpoint.
In this conversation with MediaNews4U, Sandeep Singh, Chief Operating Officer, discusses SingleInterface’s journey, the evolving retail landscape, and how AI is redefining location-based marketing.
What is SingleInterface? Are you a digital agency? How do you define yourselves?
Sandeep Singh: We are not a digital agency. We position ourselves as a retail tech platform operating at the intersection of marketing and commerce. While many SaaS platforms cater to purely digital businesses like apps or websites, we focus on the digital dimension of physical retail stores. We don’t deal in in-store technologies like POS or payment systems—instead, we help brands manage what happens before a customer steps into the store, enabling the store’s online presence and discoverability.
From a startup to Asia’s leading retail tech platform—what were the defining moments that propelled SingleInterface’s growth over the past decade?
Though we’ve grown significantly, we still operate with a startup mindset—staying agile in a rapidly evolving tech landscape. Three pivotal moments stand out:
Shift from SMBs to Enterprises:
Initially, we focused on small and medium businesses. A key turning point came when an enterprise with multiple branded locations approached us with similar challenges faced by single-store owners—discoverability, consistency in digital presence, and reputation management. Recognizing this need, we customized our platform for multi-location, branded enterprises like HDFC Bank, KFC, and Tata Motors. This changed our go-to-market strategy, enabling rapid scaling through a single enterprise contract covering hundreds of locations.
Post-COVID Digital Acceleration:
The pandemic posed an existential threat, given our core business in location marketing. But the need for real-time updates—store openings, hygiene protocols, service availability—triggered widespread digitization of physical stores. Customers began valuing digital footprints for offline stores, and platforms like Google and Meta built dedicated omnichannel teams, which validated and boosted our positioning.
AI Integration and International Expansion:
We began integrating AI into our products about 2–3 years ago. Today, AI powers our data insight modules, enabling deeper analytics. We’re now transitioning toward an agentic AI platform, where intelligent agents handle tasks and workflows on behalf of our clients, creating a more proactive, automated experience. This innovation, combined with our international expansion into Southeast Asia and the Middle East, marks a new phase of accelerated growth.
What is the core business model of SingleInterface, and how does it cater to the unique needs of multi-location enterprises?
Our core proposition is to digitize the marketing and commerce of physical retail locations. Many of these stores lack proper digital representation. We help brands:
- Digitize and Publish Location Data: Across all relevant platforms—from search engines and maps to new-age AI-driven search like ChatGPT and Perplexity—ensuring they’re present wherever customers are searching.
- Enable Seamless Customer Connection: Whether through calls, messages, or direct inquiries, we simplify how customers engage with local stores, boosting both traffic and transactions.
- Leverage Customer Insights: We capture and analyze signals from customer interactions—reviews, calls, visits—and provide rich insights that businesses can use to further enhance offerings and performance.
It’s a growth flywheel: discoverability leads to interactions, which generate data, which drives business insights and growth.
How does SingleInterface help brands unlock the potential of their physical storefronts in a digital-first world?
By creating a strong digital footprint for every physical location, we significantly enhance discoverability—not just for brand-specific searches like “KFC near me,” but also category and attribute-based searches like “best burgers in Chennai” or “pet-friendly cafes in Bangalore.”
We enrich location data with relevant attributes—store hours, amenities, audience preferences—so stores appear in broader, more contextual searches. This unlocks untapped customer demand and drives incremental footfall and engagement that wouldn’t happen otherwise.
Do you work exclusively with retailers, or do you also engage with clients across other categories?
We work with a wide spectrum of clients across industries. Our portfolio includes a healthy mix of brands from sectors such as automobiles, banking, BFSI, insurance, stock broking, cement, paints, consumer durables, fashion, and F&B. For example, we support brands like Puma, KFC, Burger King, and many others. In essence, any business with a physical location is a potential customer for us.
What challenges and opportunities arise when scaling across such diverse industries?
Each industry brings its own set of nuances and sits at different stages of digital maturity. For example, automotive dealerships are far ahead in digital adoption compared to outlets selling lubricants or batteries. Similarly, exclusive brand outlets are easier to onboard than multi-brand retailers, where the challenge is negotiating digital ownership—much like determining who owns the physical facade in offline branding.
We’re also expanding into agent-level digitization, such as insurance agents operating from homes or small offices, which presents its own data collection and mapping challenges.
Industry-specific factors, like varying SKUs in fashion retail versus automotive, demand tailored solutions. While 70% of our deployment process remains standardized, the remaining 30% requires customizations that vary by industry.
How do you approach cross-industry customization—for example, balancing the needs of an automotive brand versus a healthcare provider?
Over time, we’ve developed specialized modules tailored to specific industries. For instance, for F&B clients like KFC and Burger King, we’ve built menu integration capabilities for Google listings. While our core platform revolves around managing location data, we’ve created horizontal layers of customization that address the unique needs of each vertical. These pre-built modules allow us to plug in industry-specific functionalities with minimal friction, enabling efficient and scalable deployments across sectors.
Can you share a specific example that illustrates how SingleInterface enabled hyperlocal growth for a brand?
We have numerous success stories, and several are publicly available. One such example is India’s leading consumer electronics retailer, which faced challenges managing over 700 store listings and ensuring product visibility. By deploying SingleInterface’s hyperlocal marketing solutions—including location-specific microsites, accurate Google listings, Google Merchant Center integration, and AI-powered call analytics—the brand saw a sixfold increase in views and a significant boost in local search visibility.
These enhancements led to a sharp rise in smartphone-related inquiries and, ultimately, sales. In fact, our data shows that for several brands, our platform contributes to 20–30% of their total retail business. Calls generated through our listings are tracked via virtual numbers, analyzed with consent, and routed through IVRs, allowing brands to measure conversion rates—often in the range of 15–20%.
What regions or sectors are you currently targeting for expansion, and why?
We are currently operational in India, with offices in Gurgaon and Mumbai. Beyond India, we have established a strong presence across Asia, with teams in the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore—which also serves as our regional hub. While we manage a few clients in the Middle East from India, we do not yet have an on-ground team there. At this point, we’re focused on strengthening our leadership position across Asia and selectively expanding where the market demand aligns with our capabilities.
Can you walk us through the core components of your new AI-powered platform, SingleInterface AI? How is it bridging the gap between digital discovery and real-world store visits?
SingleInterface AI is deeply integrated across our platform, enhancing both discovery and customer experience. It consists of two key modules: Growth AI and Insights AI.
Growth AI focuses on optimizing digital listings, automating manual tasks like updating contact details or addresses, and auto-generating location pages based on specific themes—allowing rapid deployment with minimal effort.
Insights AI captures data from customer interactions, competitor analysis, and reviews. For instance, by analyzing recorded calls (with user consent), we identify keywords and customer intent to improve visibility. It also allows cross-comparison with nearby competitors—revealing ratings, feedback, and service gaps.
Together, these tools help brands better understand their consumers and increase the likelihood of converting online discovery into store visits.
What performance metrics do clients typically see after integration—footfall, conversions, or brand recall?
Clients typically witness a noticeable increase in three areas: views on their digital listings, call volumes to stores, and in-store visits via ‘Get Directions’ actions. These indicators signal improved discoverability and lead generation.
Enhanced listings—with rich content such as menus or specific product names—help brands rank higher in relevant searches. For example, a restaurant listing that includes “Mumbai vada” in both its menu and customer reviews is more likely to appear for users searching that term. More targeted content leads to better engagement, increased footfall, and improved conversion.
How do you ensure that your AI-driven solutions remain ethical, transparent, and compliant with regional data privacy norms?
We are deeply committed to responsible data handling. I am personally part of the IMAI AI Committee on the DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection) Act, where we’re actively discussing how AI intersects with data privacy.
While there are still some interpretational gaps, we adhere to strict governance protocols. Most of the data we handle—such as location information—is public and client-authorized. We operate under stringent NDAs and client-led agreements. Additionally, we are SOX-compliant, ISO-certified, and subject to third-party audits, ensuring adherence to the highest compliance standards.
What excites you most about the road ahead for SingleInterface—and for the industry at large?
What excites me most is the transformative potential of AI in empowering local businesses. Although we engage enterprise brands, the true impact is at the grassroots—helping individual franchisees and small retailers compete in their markets.
Today, these retailers face mounting pressure from e-commerce and Q-commerce. Many lack the tools, resources, or know-how to digitize effectively. Our mission is to simplify digital adoption, making it so intuitive and accessible that even the smallest retailer can participate and thrive. We aim to democratize technology so that every business, regardless of size or digital maturity, has a fair shot at success.
