How Sekel Tech is turning PIN codes into a powerful growth engine for retailers

Rakesh Raghuvanshi, Founder and CEO of Sekel Tech, talks to Retail4Growth about the role of PIN code clustering in enabling hyperlocal discovery, real-time decision-making and revenue-led retail growth. 

With aggregators steadily absorbing customer ownership and compressing margins, Sekel Tech is reframing the retail playbook around a simple idea – own your local customer, and you own your growth.

When Rakesh Raghuvanshi, Founder & CEO of Sekel Tech, talks about retail success, he doesn’t start with technology. He starts with location, consistency, and trust.

Retail, according to him, is a game of compounding, of presence, of familiarity, and of repeat footfall. A retail store grows stronger when it is consistently visible and accessible to its immediate community. Customers may travel long distances for a one-time experience, but for everyday needs, proximity always wins. This is precisely where Sekel Tech’s PIN code cluster targeting solution comes into play.

How does the solution work?

At its core, Sekel Tech’s PIN code cluster targeting solution is a hyperlocal retail growth system designed to help brands and retailers attract, manage, and retain customers within specific PIN codes, instead of marketing blindly to an entire city or region.

Instead of treating a city as one large market, Sekel Tech breaks it down into smaller and actionable PIN code clusters, typically within a 5–10 km radius around each store.

For every cluster, the platform then:

• Maps local demand patterns (what people are searching for nearby)
• Aligns that demand with the store’s real-time inventory
• Predicts what products will move faster in that specific area
• Runs localised digital promotions so the store shows up first on search and social platforms
• Enables direct customer connection – calls, inquiries, and follow-ups without intermediaries

“Until you start building and owning your own customer, you will not be able to scale or sustain,” Rakesh says. “The logic is, if a customer nearby is already searching online for a product or service, the local retailer should be the first point of discovery, not a marketplace.”

Technology that works behind the scenes

One of the biggest fears of tech adoption in retail is the fear of complexity and cost. Sekel Tech has kept this in mind while developing this solution. “We always tell retailers, don’t throw away your existing systems. You have already paid for them,” Rakesh explains. “Our platform sits on top of existing infrastructure – SAP, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, or other legacy systems, and integrates without replacing them. Retailers can go live within three months, without large-scale change management. Our approach is plug-and-play.”

It uses an agentic AI layer that structures catalogues, publishes digital assets, manages inbound demand, and ensures customer queries are never missed, even during peak hours. “Sales should never be lost just because the retailer is busy managing walk-ins,” he says.

Sekel Tech has seen the strongest adoption of its PIN code clustering solution in categories where customers actively seek local expertise, like automobile ancillaries, tyres, batteries, engine oil, and similar segments.

Designed for the future

Operating at PIN code granularity in a country as diverse as India, with changing languages, behaviours, and consumption patterns every few hundred kilometres, was no easy task. But by combining physical distribution understanding with digital intelligence, Sekel Tech built a model that scales.

Today, the company works with global brands across retail, eyewear, education, and more. Its roadmap is locked in for the next five years, with a clear ambition. “In the next three years, we will be a ₹500-crore company,” Rakesh says confidently. “We are solving a genuine problem, and that’s why the scale will come.”