Meet Oodles Rewards!

Meet Oodles Rewards!

This week marks the second installment of our weekly highlight of the companies in our 2017 Accelerator program. This week, we sat down to interview the Oodles Rewards team: Zul Momin (CEO), Ahmed Moledina (CTO,) and Josh Cruz (Vice President of Marketing).

What does Oodles Rewards do? (Give us your elevator pitch!)

Oodles Rewards is a marketing, analytics, and loyalty platform that connects brands & retailers with local shoppers. With Ooodles, brands and retailers can create, manage, and deliver targeted, hyper-local mobile offers to potential customers through sophisticated segmentation. The Oodles mobile app saves consumers money, allows them to earn cashback rewards, and functions as a rewards hub where users can access coupons, see mileage based fuel rewards, digitize loyalty cards, and receive location-based offers. The Oodles Loyalty Platform mobile app solution helps brands and retailers connect with consumers in real-time — and convert every transaction into relationship.

In a market full of loyalty programs & platforms, Oodles stands out from the crowd by seamlessly connecting our app to many smart connected devices — such as the Ford SYNC 3 platform, with over 15 million vehicles on the road — and creating personalized experiences like never before. Oodles is truly the future of smart advertising and marketing!

Can you tell us a little more about this market and the problem you are solving?

We’re finding that a number of retailers and brands are disconnected from their consumers. In many cases, they don’t even know who their customers are! Retailers and brands are looking to expand their businesses and increase demand — and consumers are looking for deals on items they actually want to buy! We know we can connect those dots by getting the right offer in front of the right customer at the right time — as opposed to nationwide offers from big brands that are more often than not a shot in the dark.

So how did you decide to create Oodles? What’s the story?

Three years ago, we came up with an idea: giving customers the ability to find nearby gas stations with the best pricing using a mobile app. After extensive research, we found there was a great niche for this kind of product. When Oodles beat out 160 companies at a hackathon, we knew this idea was something special. This opened a lot of doors for us. It really helped us to gain the confidence to build out our product…And here we are today, targeting not just the best price for gas, but the best products from our customers’ favorite brands. We’re really happy to be here.

What were you hoping to get out of the program?

We were excited about the opportunity to partner with Sprint, Pinsight Media, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), and others through the Sprint Accelerator program. Making connections and building relationships — whether that be with mentors, investors, or partners — was very important for us as well. We also wanted to use the accelerator as a springboard for our product development and traction for the platform. We knew working alongside and learning from other entrepreneurs in the program would be beneficial.

What has been your biggest takeaway from the program so far?

We didn’t expect the program to be this extensive. It’s really been beyond our expectations. Not only has the mentoring been valuable, but so have our connections with DFA and Pinsight Media. We are achieving results at lightning speed — things that wouldn’t have been possible if were weren’t in the program. DFA and Pinsight are sharing lots of advice, giving us access to people with specific expertise, and also giving us access to valuable resources. We are really accomplishing a lot in a very short amount of time.

We can’t wait to see what the Oodles Rewards team will accomplish over the next few months of the program! Come meet the team and other founders at our community event on May 10th from 5:30 to 7:30.