The Problem With Local Discovery

When we started building VizagGrocers.com, one of our biggest challenges was something every local business eventually faces — local discovery.

We knew the service was useful. People needed groceries delivered to their homes. The platform worked. Operations were in place.

But reaching people in our own city turned out to be far harder than building the technology itself.

The Offline Marketing Experiment

Our first approach was simple — traditional local marketing.

We printed thousands of signboards, “No Parking” boards, and small promotional boards and placed them across the city.

In total, we installed them in nearly 1,000 locations and distributed materials to around 30,000 gates.

It was a massive effort that required time, manpower, and money.

But even after all that work, it failed to create the traction we had hoped for.

The Workforce Problem

Physical marketing requires people on the ground. When you face manpower shortages, it becomes extremely difficult to execute such campaigns consistently.

Even if you outsource the work, someone must supervise and inspect everything.

And in reality, it is almost impossible to monitor every activity in the field.

Workforce monitoring apps exist, but every system has flaws. People eventually find ways to bypass them.

Many workers today simply do not want to work in the field, making physical marketing even more difficult to sustain.

The Limits of Word-of-Mouth

Another option is to trust your product and wait for word-of-mouth growth.

But that process can take years.

And during that time, a well-funded competitor can easily enter the market and capture attention with massive marketing budgets.

The Advertising Dilemma

We experimented with several forms of advertising.

Flex banners seemed affordable, but municipal authorities often removed them citing environmental and safety concerns.

Large billboards and newspaper advertisements were simply too expensive for a small startup.

Digital ads on social media also did not produce the results we expected.

And then came the trend of social media influencers.

Influencers with genuine audiences charge extremely high fees, while with smaller influencers it is difficult to know who their followers really are.

The Startup Struggle

At some point, many entrepreneurs reach a difficult stage.

They are unable to expand, but also unwilling to shut down the venture they have spent years building.

They struggle to meet operational expenses while constantly searching for new customers.

Profitability feels like something far beyond the horizon — almost a distant dream.

The Motivation Behind LokalBoard

LokalBoard.com is our sincere attempt to address this problem.

Our goal is simple: to make local discovery easier for businesses, founders, and communities.

We want every idea to have a fair chance to grow.

We want people to explore everything around them with just a simple scroll on their phone.

And we want to become the missing connection in a digitally connected world.

Today we can know what is happening in Russia or the United States within minutes.

Yet many of us still do not know about the new ventures, services, and ideas emerging in our very own street.

That is the gap LokalBoard hopes to close.

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