The challenge
A high-influence audience with no touchpoint
Wall putty is bought and applied by painters, masons and contractors, and the manufacturer's consumer touchpoints with them were limited. The product moved through the channel without the brand ever meeting the person who chose it and spread it on a wall.
That absence had a data cost as much as a loyalty one. Without a scan or a registration, the manufacturer had no geographic, SKU-level or behavioural intelligence on its own demand, which left sales and distribution planning working from dispatch figures rather than consumption.
Any consumer promotion at this scale also raises a fraud problem immediately. A cashback offer on a fast-moving building material invites duplicate claims unless each reward is tied to a specific, single-use unit of product.
- Launch a QR-based cashback program - to reward purchases instantly
- Capture consumer intelligence - geo, SKU and behavioral data for sales and distribution efficiency
- Provide dual benefits - instant UPI cashback plus branded merchandise redemptions
- Prevent fraud - with secure, one-time-use QR codes
- Enable dynamic campaign control - to boost sales for specific SKUs or regions
The solution
Split the reward, keep them coming back
The consumer journey is four steps: buy the product, scan the tamper-proof QR, earn cashback, redeem merchandise. What makes it work commercially is the split: 80% of the reward is paid as instant UPI cashback and 20% as loyalty points. The cash delivers the gratification that gets the first scan, and the points create a balance that only has value if the person scans again.
Central control sits behind the simplicity. QR activation is dynamic and batch-wise, rewards are configurable in real time per SKU, campaign or region, and geo-location and SKU mapping give granular insight into where product is actually being consumed. Fraud prevention runs on device and account linking against single-use codes, and the admin console reports scans by SKU and region, geo heatmaps, UPI redemptions and merchandise analytics.
- Scan-based rewards - buy the product, scan the tamper-proof QR, earn cashback, redeem merchandise
- QR-code generator - dynamic, batch-wise activation controlling which codes are live
- Rule engine - rewards configurable in real time per SKU, campaign or region
- Cashouts - 80% of every reward paid as instant UPI cashback, with 20% held as loyalty points
- Digital wallet and referrals - in-app wallet, scan history, order tracking, referrals and gamified rewards
- Security, fraud and governance - single-use codes with device and account linking to block duplicate and repeat claims
- Real-time analytics dashboard - SKU and region scan dashboards, geo heatmaps, UPI redemption reports and behavioural analytics
The results
1.9 million scans, and a map of real demand
1.9 million tamper-proof QR scans have been processed, with a 36% repeat scan rate among painters and contractors. The 80/20 split is doing that work: cash answers the question of why scan at all, and the points balance answers why scan the next bag too. Neither half would hold on its own.
For the business, the more durable output is the data. Geo-location and SKU mapping turned dispatch-based planning into consumption-based planning, with heatmaps showing where product is actually applied rather than where it was shipped. Real-time reward configuration means the manufacturer can now push a specific SKU in a specific region within a campaign rather than between campaigns.
Takeaway: instant cash buys the first scan. A points balance buys the second, which is why a split reward outperforms either one alone.
1.9M
Tamper-proof QR scans processed
80/20
Split between instant UPI cash and loyalty points
36%
Repeat scan rate among painters and contractors