Trufan Launches New Giveaways Platform to Help Toronto BIAs and Main Street Businesses as a part of Toronto Community Collaboration Program
As a part of the Community Collaboration Program, Digital Main Street is pleased to announce that Trufan has been selected to pilot its giveaways platform in the Greektown on the Danforth BIA, Yonge + St Clair BIA, Duke Heights BIA, York Eglinton BIA and Leslieville BIAs this winter. Funding for this pilot is made available through the Digital Main Street Future Proof program, with support from Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev (Ontario) et ventureLAB.
Trufan, through its acquisition of PLAYR, will be facilitating BIA contests featuring small businesses, in addition to smaller scale contests for individual businesses, using the influence of social media to collect opt-in first person data. The first of these giveaways is live today. These contests can increase the social media outreach for small businesses and give them valuable information about their customer base.
“The Government of Canada is pleased to support the Digital Main Street platform and see innovative technology pilot studies, like this one with Trufan, helping businesses to strengthen their digital presence and reach their customers in new ways. We are proud to work with Digital Main Street partners including the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA), Communitech, Invest Ottawa and the Regional Innovation Centres to help our innovation ecosystem grow stronger.” – The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages and Minister responsible for FedDev Ontario
“Through this partnership with Trufan our goal is to drive more traffic to local businesses and their BIAs to ultimately grow sales. We need more tools to get local businesses in front of their clientele throughout this pandemic and are excited to partner with Trufan to help deliver on that mission.” – John Kiru, Executive Director of the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas
“We care passionately about the small business community and believe this pilot will empower businesses to strengthen their digital presence, in new ways they never thought were possible”– Swish Goswami, CEO, Trufan
The Community Collaboration Project was launched last summer under the Future Proof banner and aims to pilot community wide pilots that help main street businesses reach customers in new ways as they face ongoing restrictions. Projects will run until March 2021.
About Digital Main Street
Digital Main Street is a program that helps main street businesses achieve digital transformation. The program is built around an online learning platform, structured training programs, and our Digital Service Squad, a team of street-level team members who help main street businesses grow and manage their operations through technology.
Digital Main Street was created by the Toronto Association on Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) with direct support from the City of Toronto. DMS is also supported by a group of strategic business partners, including Google, Mastercard, Shopify, Microsoft, Facebook, Intuit QuickBooks, Square, and Yellow Pages. A $42.5-million investment from FedDev Ontario and an additional $7.45 million from the Government of Ontario brought together the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas, Communitech, Invest Ottawa, and the Ontario Business Improvement Area Association to expand the Digital Main Street Platform in order to support more businesses to go digital as a response to the impacts of COVID-19.
About the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA)
The Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) is a not-for-profit umbrella organization working with the 85 Business Improvement Areas within the City of Toronto, who in turn represent more than 90,000 business and property owners.
À propos FedDev Ontario
For more than 10 years, FedDev Ontario has worked to advance and diversify the southern Ontario economy through funding opportunities and business services that support innovation and growth in Canada’s most populous region. Learn more about the impacts the Agency is having in southern Ontario by exploring our pivotal projects.
About Trufan
Trufan is an audience engagement company providing tools to help businesses understand and grow their social audience while generating first-party data. The Toronto-based company is backed by several NBA players, media executives, and venture firms. Learn more about their audience segmentation platform et audience growth platform.
About ventureLab
ventureLAB is a leading technology hub located in Markham in York Region, Canada’s second largest tech cluster. At ventureLAB, we grow globally competitive tech titans that build-to-scale in Canada, in three key areas of focus: hardware, health, and inclusivity. ventureLAB has enabled thousands of tech companies to scale, and our portfolio of companies have created close to 4,000 jobs that have raised over $200 million in investment capital to continue their growth and scale.
