“… AMPEE, a revolutionary rewards program that harnesses the power of your personal network to provide Perpetual Matching Rewards…” goes a line on the website of AMPEE. OK. Good jargons. And impressive mission statement, value statement ( or whatever ). But what it is? I used the website for a while. What I think about it? One phrase. Multilevel marketing. Or MLM, as it is popularly known as. The website is basically offering multilevel marketing service. As in the offline world, even here the service is promoted using exotic statements reading which, you can hardly make out that it is actually good old MLM.
The website is launched by the Hyderabad based “Metaminds Software Solutions”. The website looks good and uses some catchy language to lure viewers into becoming a “member”. Sample this – “AMPEE is a truly distinctive offering in the marketplace. Our uniqueness derives from our community-based model, combining each individual’s passion to succeed with their desire to benefit friends and family.”
The company has tied up with two partners – Prisb (prisb.com), an online shopping portal and TakeOffTrip (takeofftrip.com), an online travel portal. Once registered, the user is supposed to make online make transactions from these websites, which will make him point-rich. (Hmm….agian…someone launching its own point-system). Then there are point-rewards for registering, buying from the partner sites, and making others join your “network”. Prism.com is a Metaminds company. So, can it work here ?
MLM has benefited quite a few people. It has been quite successful in case of companies like Amway. However, with a lot of people entering into this space, there started a phase where companies with no clear business model except adding more people to the network entered the scene. This led to an MLM-burst kind of situation, where such companies, after attracting the customers with a promise to help them make crores, went kaput. Thereby making a serious dent into the trust of the customers. Now the scene in India is that people see with doubt every person who approaches them with an MLM offer.
Prisb.com and Takeofftrip.com both belong to Metaminds. So, rather than making Ampee as an independent network who “partners” with Prisb, if Metaminds would have introduced this system for Prisb itself, it might have worked. But with the current scene in India, it’s really difficult to expect a multilevel networking business to make any serious profits. And no, being “online” MLM company does not help either. The current “offline players are already using the online features to register and keep tracks of the members and their points and earnings. It’s not the medium that matters as much as the concept do. A little tweaking with the basic fundamental concept and integrating MLM into e-shopping experience itself, may actually help Metaminds.
u have not provided any link to “ampee” or the parent co “metamind” which may help to see more information about their activity
if your report is correct then they seems to have
given a new dimension to MLM
First of all let me thank Mr. Ankit Saxena for giving nice review to our portals. Would like to add some sents to the article, AMPEE is definately the revolutionary rewards program. Indeed the concept is MLM but restricted at one level. In general you earn rewards or points against your spending but when it cmoes to AMPEE, we don’t expect our customers to buy in order to earn points. They would earn points for what ever activity they do in AMPEE. While registration you earn points, you participate in survey you earn points, you visit our site daily, you earn visitation points, you refer a friend you earn points, if any or all of your friends join what ever points they would be earning from their direct source, parent would also earn matching points. Thats the beauty of this program and thats why its called Perpetual Matching Rewards. There are various sources for the users to earn points above all when you redeem your points for any purchasing on Prisb (Online shopping portal) or Takeofftrip (Online Travel Portal), whatever points you redeem you earn points even on your redeemed points – Isn’t it good !!
I can write a 10 page article describing the advantage and exclusivity of AMPEE, Prisb & TOT(TakeOffTrip) among any other Indian online players, i know you are not going to post that.
Anyway thanx again Ankit for your review and for Arun: you may reach metaminds at http://www.mmgs.com, AMPEE- http://www.ampee.com, Prisb – http://www.prisb.com and TakeOffTrip – http://www.takeofftrip.com.
You may reach me anytime at shreepals@mmgs.com.
Shreepal
Arun, you are very correct the company is giving new directions to MLM, as dictated by Ankit, there have been companies which have lured crorer of rupees collected from the users and then lure.
Here the company is just using a reference to partner with your friends and circle will course benefit you too.
The website is http://www.ampee.com
thank u mr shreepal for your information
yours is an innovation in old mlm concept i will comment after going through the mentioned sites
ankit has has introduced it in a very catchy style which developed my interst .
@ Shreepal
Hi Shreepal. It was good to see you commenting on my article. I wrote just what I saw. I am sure there is more to Ampee.com. As somebody interested in entrepreneurship, I desperately want all the Indian entrepreneurs to succeed. I wish that the thought that has gone into the development of Ampee actually pays off.
But you must be aware of the sentiments in the market towards the MLM business. You will need more than hardwork to win people’s trust.
If you have a 10-page story about Ampee, or any such product you can anytime send us. If we find it interesting, we will publish it.
By the way, this story is published in “Bangalore Mirror”, Times of India, Bangalore (31-Oct-2007)
So, you already got some free publicity
@Arun
I am glad that you like my writings. Please keep coming to the blog for such interesting articles. Thank you.