Retailopia

Is Flipkart spending 100 Cr on TV Commercials?

2013-05-04T17:30:00.001+05:30

We all saw the first ad from Flipkart that came in early 2012 during IPL time.

The concept of the ad was well designed.

It was a new marketing campaign with a tagline of ‘Shopping Ka Naya Address.’

Also, It was well received by TV viewers.

We don’t know how much impact made on Flipkart revenues but the cost of running TV commercial is huge.

There is no evidence as such how much Flipkart has spent on airing these commercials during April –Dec 2012, but it can be close to 100 Cr on TV commercial only.

Other players like ebay, Yebhi, Jabong also not behind. They also followed the footstep of Flipkart to reach out to end customers. There is no doubt that e-commerce companies spending heavily on marketing channels.

Image credit - Flipkart

Online Toys in India | ToyTasting and Yellow Giraffe

2013-04-13T17:58:00.000+05:30

ToyTasting is one of the largest non-media house YouTube channel in India. The channel was founded in Jan-12, by Richa Dikshit, formerly an investment banker with Merrill Lynch.

ToyTasting created a niche by focusing on making videos on toys. After the initial success of ToyTasting, Richa launched Yellow Giraffe to cater to the growing demand for toys in India.

How did ToyTasting happen?

Well, I can't claim to have had a grand plan from day one. The idea of sharing genuine user review of toys came to me from my own frustrations as a mother looking to buy toys. We made a few videos and put them online. Some of the larger toy companies in India like Mattel, Simba and MyBabyExcel, were early supporters of this effort. Over time, the positive feedback that we've received has kept us going. Today our channel has nearly 7 million views and over 180 videos.

What do you think about the toys market in India?

Firstly, I think the recognition of toys as an aid for supplemental education is low. The bulk of the toy market is composed of low end toys, which are purchased last minute before attending a birthday party. I think this segment will always be there. But as awareness increases, the purchase of toys, for own child consumption will increase. This ofcourse will require parents to see toys as an educational aid. Over time, I believe that even the gifting market will evolve, as close friends and relatives would like to be seen as a thoughtful gifter on birthdays.

Why enter the crowed ecommerce space with Yellow Giraffe?

Before launching Yellow Giraffe, I and the team had spent months researching toys as part of the Toy Tasting project. While there are quite a few online stores that are selling toys, we felt their commitment to the product category is limited beyond stocking the product. This is where Yellow Giraffe differentiates. We don't just focus on the usual toys Barbie, Fisher Price and LEGO. We have a wide range of toy brands covering various skills anddevelopment milestones.

Can you given an example of how consumers interact at Yellow Giraffe?

Well, the customers who come to our store want to be interacting with a retailer who's researched the products being stocked. Firstly, all our toys are categorized as per the Skill Benefit that is derived from that toy. On occasions we've had dialogues with customers extending over five interactions, before they've made their purchase. The usual online store in India, is spread across too many categories to be able to address detailed product queries.

Buying From SnapDeal : Think Twice

2013-04-12T19:17:00.000+05:30

Guys – Snapdeal is a marketplace, they don’t keep inventory[items]. They work on dealer network. SnapDeal is just a broker/transaction portal. Snapdeal lists items on its website and don’t do proper check with their dealers.

Recently, I have encountered with two such incidents. I don’t know if you guys have also experienced the same. My Success Rate with Snapdeal is 0%

Cancellation of Order and Refund takes 7-10 days’ time

I have ordered one laptop and paid upfront, Got a message that it would be dispatched by 11^th Apr 2013. After 2-3 days got a message that dispatch date is 16^th and today got a call that they can’t make it. The money will be refunded in next 7 working days. Order ID : 936845784

Damaged Old Products Sometimes

We have ordered a cycle from Snapdeal .Order ID : 844060716 (http://www.snapdeal.com/product/everready-exciting-red-cycle/220736?RID=similarsoldout_products_1)

The cycle delivered is quite old, and some plastic stuff like - basket etc is broken. First of all, it got delayed by 2 days what snapdeal has promised. The issue was my son's birthday was on Jan 22, 2013 and I was very disappointed. The colour I order was red but it is pink. Also it had lot of dents in the entire body... paint was also chipping out. Also packaging was pathetic..

So do your research before you buy from any marketplace [those who don’t keep Inventory and believe in Just In Time and Dealer Network].

Image Credit: Snapdeal

How Important is the Name of Your Website

2013-03-21T20:40:00.000+05:30

What is in the name? Everything. People know you by your Name, people reach you by your Name, and people spread word about your Name. Your Name is your brand identity, your business identity and lot of times, part of your identity. You would want people to notice it, to like it, to talk about it. It has to be interesting for somebody to notice it in the first place. It has to be engaging for someone to like associating with it. It has to be simple and non-embarrassing for someone to recommend it.

So important, yet do not start with the name, get the vision and mission of your business first, and let the brand name flow from it. We are talking specifically about domain names here. Ideally you should get YOURBRAND.com (or YOURBRAND.in); second option, buy it from the current owner; third option, change your brandname. Whatever the options, please don’t make avlblname12.com your BRAND.

Here are some Do’s and Don’ts for naming your website, and your business (and maybe your dog)

DO’s

Interesting - The name can be interesting if you know the brand already (bigbazaar.com), if there is a fun element to it (Mr.Dumbo.com), if it is informative about the product (bhopalkirana.com) or service (rechargeitnow.com), or just plain witty (makkhichoose.com).

Unique - SHAADI.COM - awesome catch, but merishaadi.com, terishaadi.com, gimme a break -even sabkishaadi.com is registered. Think smart, think deep, be distinct, there is shehnai, bandhan, sanjog.

Clever - Naaptol.com, baarbaargain.com, kaisediya.com. Sometimes being clever is the only way to get a non-superpremium domain, and stand out smarter. Coined names can also work wonderfully, direct yet distinct - quikr.com

Communicates your proposition - premiumgrocer is luxury, exotica implies organic & international, sabsesasta implies value - don’t mix.

Future ready - Andherifruits.com is perfect message delivered. What if later you want to sell veggies, or eggs? What if you want to expand to Bandra? A name that communicates your vision, like aaramshop.com could never go wrong (unless your vision was wrong).

Easy to spell - gharzaroorat.com, even if 10% users spell it incorrectly and therefore leave you, it is not a good idea. Bounce the name with your friends first, ask them to spell it; if 2-3 variants turn up, time to think of something else. Good example of easy spell - easyration.com.

Memorable - Hamarabazar seems a good name. But, ask its customers where they buy from and they’ll say aapkabazaar, merabazaar, sabkabazaar. Same solution, bounce the name with 5 friends, if everyone remembers it correctly the next day, stamp it.

Multilingual - India has 28 states, 125 languages etc etc. Just check the name is not ridiculous or offensive in any major tongue. Maybe even internationally suitable (Swissbit.ch)

Clear Communication - If your brand name is made up of two or more words, always use camel caps, maybe different color and but avoidably different fonts. Don’t use www or http, the guy is a regular net user and knows it.

Use Tools - Many tools are available that assist in smart thinking and bulk domain searching. Example - Dotomator, bustaname, dombuddy, domainbark. If still in doubt, hire an expert like Albert Dali; one who knows why K is better than C and why L should not follow I.

DON’Ts

Long name- Agarwalandsonsmedicalstore.com, I know short names aren’t easily available, but I’ll reach my chemist faster than I’ll type your name. Keep it short, bro.

ProductName.com- Do you name your shop car? Then why name your site car.com? carwale.com - much better.

Plurals, apostrophe - India’sMart.com looks a nice name, but many would end up on Indiamart.com. And many more would read it as IndiaSmart, remember mensexchange.com (Men’s Exchange), childslaughter.com (Child’s Laughter).

Abbreviations, Numbers - For Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited, IRCTC makes sense, but don’t use an abbreviation unless that is your brand. Same for numbers, if you plan to use them, make it really clear in your communications and marketing.

Non-standard Spellings - Be ready for a strong marketing budget to drive in your version (keerana.com); otherwise, stay away.

Hyphens, Slashes- Be aware that lot of your customers would be spending at your ‘without the hyphen’ competitor. Also, be ready with lot of marketing budget to remind people of the hyphen.

Typo prone - includes above categories and some more (colourstore.com or colorstore.com). Also includes tongue twisters.

Misinterpretation - I’ll just list some to get the point home - (who represents - whorepresents.com, Mole station nursery - molestationnursery.com, IT Scrap-itscrap.com)

Few more culprits - Racial, vulgar, unpleasant - use your own sensibilities, I have an idea that people don’t like to be offended.

Some more Conundrums

• Abstract vs Direct: Abstract names (jabong.com, yahoo.com, google.com) make much better brand names in the long term than direct names (fashion.com, mail.com, search.com). Though they not only need marketing budgets, sometimes they may totally fail to make a connect, without you ever getting to know why

• Coined vs Real: Really clever coined words (hotmail, kartease, ezee-shop) can successfully communicate your proposition, and give advantage of being unique as well. Though there is always risk of getting influenced with fad trends and giving yourself a forgettable name

• .com or .in: Very common topic of debate on forums. I would just say one thing, the top sites in India are not ‘.in’ but ‘.com ‘. Even those who started as ‘.in’ had to buy ‘.com’ domain as well, most likely at a premium. At the same time, all the ‘.com’ sites have acquired their ’.in’ domains. Conclusion, either buy both or I don’t know

• Keywords: Long back Google reduced weight of keywords in domain name. So now when I, sitting in Delhi, look for ‘grocery’ in Google, grocery.com doesn’t figure in top 100. As Google says, make your site for the customer, not for the search engine.

If you do well, which I hope you do; your name will be on your site, visiting cards, letterheads, mails, mailers, pamphlets, advertisements, delivery van, employee uniform, carry bags and everywhere else. You can’t change it then. So invest your time in choosing the right one. And the story doesn’t end with naming it; you have to talk about it all the time. Just remember one thing in every communication - respect the brand, only then will others respect it.

About Ankur Gupta

Ankur Gupta is an alumni of IIM, Bangalore and has over 10 year experience in retail. He is founder of Bracket India, a merchandise consulting firm for e-commerce space. Bracket also does content management for product sites. Bracket Ad division provides marketing avenues for product brands in collaboration with e-commerce sites.

TyreOnWheels.Com – Buy Tyres Online with India’s 1st Mobile Tyre Fitting Service at the Doorstep

2013-03-21T20:14:00.000+05:30

Have you ever heard of tyre shop coming right at your doorstep? Founded recently in February 2013, now you can buy tyres online with TyreOnWheels.com and get them fitted with India’s First Mobile Tyre Fitting Service at your doorstep without even stepping out. There are three things they encouraged in their business – customer service, wider selection of products, and better price. The founding team of TyreOnWheels.Com has a 30 year long experience in the tyre industry.Recently, Retailopia had a one to one with Rajat Malhotra who is the co-founder of the company.

What is the concept behind TyreOnWheels?

Rajat: The tyre purchase in India has for years involved customers taking their vehicles to a tyre shop for buying new tyres and gets them fitted and balanced. We have now turned the table by customer buying the tyres online and getting them fitted at their home, work or anywhere even in the parking spots. Through our website, customers are able to find a wide range of Passenger Car, SUV, 4x4, High Performance & Bike tyres and can search by tyre size, vehicle make or tyre brand that are available and book a preferred date, time and location of their choice. We deliver and fit new tyres anywhere, anytime.

How did you come up with the name TyreOnWheels?

Rajat: Our idea, right from the start, was to help customers in buying their preferred tyre with minimum distraction to their busy day and getting their tyres fitted through our Mobile Fitting vehicles at an appropriate date, time and location of their choice either at home or work and to be it as straightforward as possible. And the brand name clearly reflects that.

How are you different from other online retailers in India?

Rajat: We ensure that we always sell our products at a price which is much lower than the maximum retail price of those products from tyre dealers.

We are the first ones in India to execute the idea of buying the tyres online and getting it fitted and balanced right at the doorstep through our Mobile Tyre Fitting vehicles and the mobile fitting service is currently available for the Delhi / NCR region and we plan to be present in all the major metro cities within few months.

While we deliver both car and motor bike tyres Pan-India through courier and ensure that the delivery takes place within a week.

What does Mobile Tyre Fitting service include and what are your payment options?

Rajat: All Our mobile tyre Fitting vans are fitted with the most modern tyre changing and wheel balancing equipment’s allowing technicians to work on wheels up to 21”. For pace effectiveness hydraulic jacks are used to clamp the vehicle for tyre fitting and all mobile vans are equipped with green friendly air compressors to fill air into the tyres.

Mobile Tyre Fitting service includes arriving on site to fit the tyres at an agreed time, date and location of customers convenience, new tubeless valves in case of tubeless tyres, wheel balancing, balancing weights and disposal of your old tyres in an eco-friendly way.

On payment front, we are the First in India to provide customers with an option to buy tyres now and pay later in equal monthly installments (EMI). We also accept online payments via Net Banking, Credit and Debit Card for all the orders.

For Delhi / NCR region, Customers have an option to book their tyres by paying only 20 % of the ordered amount upfront and the rest of the amount can be paid via cash or debit/credit card on delivery or on fitment of tyres.

Which all locations are you getting orders from?

Rajat: We are already delivering orders across India and have been getting orders from both Metro and small cities.

Have you raised any funding yet? If no, would you want investors to reach out to you?

Rajat: No, we have not raised any funds till now. We are bootstrapping the business from our own funds and will not go out in the market for fund raising till the time we need a significant infusion.

However, we are actively looking out for consultants and advisors. We believe that advice of experienced advisors is worth much more important than only money. We would be happy if we are contacted by experienced industry veterans and would want to help us grow.

What are your plans and aspirations for the future?

Rajat: We have had an amazing response from customers. Our customer base and Facebook community both have grown rapidly. We plan to broad-based our product offering and to include car accessories, battery & alloy wheels from the other categories. We also plan to roll out more Mobile fitting vehicles in Bangalore, Chandigarh, Mumbai & Chennai and to have our presence in all the major cities by the next year.

Any closing message for budding entrepreneurs?

Rajat: Execution is the key. It is far more effective to release an imperfect plan that not to release a perfect one. It may sound clichéd, but if I look at our own journey so far, the only thing we have done is keep taking new steps - one after the other. And more often than not, we have stumbled, corrected and then moved on.

GuitarStreet.in : Should I Buy Guitar Online?

2013-03-15T15:07:00.000+05:30

Which things should we buy online? Ofcourse everything. But why everything not getting sold online. We are reaching a stage where almost whatever you can think of will get sold online. Those days are not that far. Typically, people are worried about Price, Packaging, Delivery, Quality of Service etc. Would you like to buy guitar online if someone will guarantee you about aforementioned. Here comes Guitarstreet.in – Co-Founder and Head Operations, Utkarsh Apoorva.

So, what was the impetus behind this venture?

GuitarStreet's foundation dates back to the time when I bought my first Guitar. Not knowing where to purchase it from, I asked some friends and eventually spotted an old store in Chandni Chowk in Delhi. I wasn't aware of the large music stores at CP. Finally, me and my father spotted the store we were looking for, and bought a Givson. The store had very limited options and almost no guidance for making an informed purchase. Fast forward a few years, and the scenario had not really changed. So when we were evaluating multiple ideas, I instantly connected with it.

Considering your ambitious expansion plans, what market size are you tapping?

We are very confident of becoming the largest retailers in our segment. We are targeting an average daily sale of 30 instruments within next six months.

What types of customers are you catering to presently?

Our customers are spread across all over India. Tier-2 towns constitute about 60% of our sale currently. Remaining 40% comes from the Metros and Tier-1.

But, is the response competitive enough? Wouldn’t people still prefer a physical store over an online portal?

Not really. A good offline store with multiple buying options is a rarity even in Tier-1 cites, for our segment. Online offers ease of product research and purchase along with a very large number of options to choose from - something that customers don't get in most offline stores.

How did you come up with the Travel n Guitar Camp? Are you trying to diversify?

Not really. It is an experiment aimed towards getting customers from other segments excited about music. Currently, while everyone wants to own/play a guitar once in a lifetime, very few get to do it because of lack of information on the 'hows'. We said what if we disconnected the idea of playing a Guitar from the theoretical aspects of music - it is a culture. What if, guitar playing got down to the simple thing that it is - a strumming instrument enjoyed over light chat and meeting new people.

What is the idea behind this Travel n Guitar Camp?

The basic idea is very simple. A lot of our customers said that they wanted to know where to learn Guitar. At the same time, we got to hear things like "I don't get the time" and "On holidays, we spend time with family and really cannot focus on Music". So we said, let’s have a dedicated boot-camp on learning music - away from the noise of city, in a calm scenic environment.

What are your plans and aspirations for the future?

We have had an amazing response from customers. Our customer base and Facebook community, both have grown rapidly. We plan to broad-based our product offering to include many new models in Guitars and electronics for music. Moreover, we are working towards developing some many 'firsts' in ecommerce to increase the stickiness of our site. The basic idea is, you think music, you think GuitarStreet.

Have you raised any funding yet? If no, would you want investors to reach out to you?

We are self-funded as yet. We are in talks with a few investors right now.

Any closing message for budding entrepreneurs?

Execution is the key. It is far more effective to release an imperfect plan that not to release a perfect one. It may sound clichéd, but if I look at our own journey so far, the only thing we have done is keep taking new steps - one after the other. And more often than not, we have stumbled, corrected and then moved on.

Pricesbolo : Price Search Engine With New User Interface

2013-02-28T20:55:00.000+05:30

You have taken a decision on what you want to buy online, but which site? Jabong, Flipkart, Tradus, Naaptol , there are plenty of others. If you are loyal to any particular online store, you will buy from that, it may end up charging you more. If you are smart, you will go through each and every website and search prices that is very cumbersome and time consuming Process. But if you are smarter, you can do one more click and search price on Pricesbolo. It is a Price comparison site. This is basically Price Search Engine with kick ass UI.

PricesBolo is revolutionized with One Click Price Search for Mobile Phones. PricesBolo is transformed into Price Search Engine and helps consumers to know the best price of mobile phones from all online stores within seconds. The user interface is very simple but powerful. The single page design without pagination will help the users to find the price of a product without any hassles.

Predictye is an innovative mind reading feature which can predict and auto-complete the appropriate word after seeing your keystrokes.

There are filters on the left side which will help to refine the results on the fly. The Seller filter will help the users to refine the results with their favorite sellers.

Results along with the related accessories are much helpful for the users in buying decision process. When the user searches Samsung Galaxy S3, he gets prices from all online stores along with the related accessories like Screen protector, Flip case etc. for Samsung Galaxy S3.

“Our idea is to provide the latest prices from all online stores to the users within seconds and help them in buying decision process. We planned to add other categories in coming months. We want to build and maintain the trust among the existing users and scale the user base with the help of search engines, Social media, Bloggers etc.” says Parthiban TS , Co-founder and Director of Pricesbolo.com

Do You Want To Start An Ecommerce Company? Just Read This….

2013-02-24T12:26:00.000+05:30

Starting and successfully running an online retail company is not a joke. It requires lot of courage, passion and hard work to synchronize the entire supply chain - from getting right partners to reach out to the end customers. In this journey, many have sleepless nights to get their business going. We have talked with many young entrepreneurs who see lot of potential in selling online. But at the same time, they have shared some of the challenges that they have gone through or still going through. Here are few tips from those who have already “Been There, Done That”.

Identify the need : Before starting an ecommerce company , check out if you are adding any value. “We wanted to make sure that people do not have to travel to different places to buy authentic products from the places famous for them. This was an idea which was never executed in India and we had conviction that there is ample demand for such products which is unmet, says Zuhai Khan, Co-Founder of ShopAtPlaces.” At the same time, Founder of Oyechotu – Indian Food Abroad, Ruchita Desai says, “It was out of personal experience. I have lived outside of India and being the telecoms profession also traveled around many parts of the world. The most pressing problem for Indians who are living abroad is good, authentic Indian food. I thus, started the venture of delivering Indian food products to Indians living abroad.”

Major Investments: There are multiple cost and revenue models in each online business. While many invest majority of their budget in procuring inventory, other are investing in marketing and building IT infrastructure. “As a startup you need to make wise decisions on spending based on priorities. Identification of core assets, prioritizing them based on the business maturity stages and spending the right amount is the key. To OyeChotu.com, the main assets are ecommerce site & the logistics. We spend most of the budget around it. For a good business idea you will get many opportunities, but prioritize and invest your time, effort and money on the key ones. You can't do everything or else you will do nothing” , Says Ruchita Desai, Founder of OyeChotu. While Investment Banker turned Internet Retailer , Zuhaib Khan created financial model and found out the costs involved - both fixed and variable - through public and private sources and plugged in those costs in the model. Sometimes they had to speak to industry sources to get an idea.

Ecommerce Platform : There is always a confusion, whether to build our own platform to sell things online or should we try to get hosted, SaaS based platform to launch online store. While former gives you lot of flexibility but at the same time huge cost of building and maintaining it, later is other way round. Companies like Shop.inonit is using a hosted platform Martjack but Shopatplace and Oyechotu think differently. “We have invested to build our own e-commerce site as we wanted lots of features and customized modules which would have been difficult to do on a packaged solution and would have been more time consuming.”, Says Zuhaib Khan from ShopAtPlaces.

Logistics: Customer wants - Timely delivery in a Good Condition. “We wanted to deliver across India from the day we started operations with a good service offering at the cutomers' end and hence we tied up with 3 vendors at the start. We are shipping items through DTDC, Javas and Indiaontime as of now. We have tied up with Fedex for international deliveries. All 4 of them are quite reliable.” Says Zuhaib Khan.

Challenges Faced: “We are improving our packaging so that product quality remains intact. Sometimes products are out of stock thus delaying the delivery service levels. Apart from that we have not seen any logistics challenges.” Says Ruchita Desai from OyeChotu. “Tracking packages and ensuring that they reach the customers on time is one of the challenge as the infrastructure is not that developed in India.”, says Zuhaib Khan from ShopAtPlaces.

Dezyna : Social Affiliate Program to Reduce Ecommerce Customer Acquisition Cost

2013-02-18T19:43:00.002+05:30

If you have a content-driven Web site, how can you make money off your traffic? or If you are an online merchant, how can you get people to your site to buy your products? One popular option that serves both of these functions is an affiliate program. and here comes Dezyna.

Dezyna is founded by Ankit Arora. Before starting dezyna, he was in Silicon Valley, California where he worked as an engineer at an Electronic Design Automation Company. After returning to India, he started an online skill school called courseon.com. He loves entrepreneurship, creating code, and is also a marathon runner. He holds a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Southern California. We had a talk with Ankit to know more about Dezyna.

What is dezyna.com ?

dezyna.com is a product discovery and social affiliate platform.

The social affiliate platform enables merchants to create an affiliate program to reward users whenever a sale happens due to their recommendation. A “Share” button is embedded on the product page or an offers page on the merchant’s site. A unique referral link is automatically created each time a user clicks on the button. The user can share this link on social networks or blogs. Moreover, the offers and products are also aggregated on dezyna.com.

What does dezyna mean ?

dezyna is derived from "design" and is pronounced as 'designaa'. Basically, our vision is to aggregate the best designed products on our portal from all over the web.

How did you think about this idea?

This idea is based on two of my observations. Firstly, e-commerce companies are spending a lot of money on customer acquisition and hence the online retail business is not sustainable at present. Secondly, many new e-commerce companies selling unique and niche products online have started up but still it's very difficult for consumers to discover these products.

So our platform solves these two problems by combining a product discovery platform with a social affiliate platform.

Could you elaborate on how the platform helps e-commerce companies ?

The social affiliate platform helps e-commerce companies reduce their cost of customer acquisition by combining social networking with affiliate marketing. It helps them increase brand visibility by turning their users into social sellers. Moreover, the platform is designed to be performance driven and merchants pay only when a sale takes place on their site.

Have you raised any funding yet?

No, we haven't raised any funding yet and are completely bootstrapped.

We're looking for seed capital to build a great team. But most importantly, right now, we're looking for mentors to teach and guide us.

Where do you want to see dezyna after a year?

We want to help and work with as many online merchants as possible after a year. Also, we want to make our product discovery platform more relevant, smart, and user-centric.

Mebelkart - IITians Selling Furniture, Bean Bags Online

2013-02-14T16:53:00.001+05:30

Furniture shopping has just become easier with Mebelkart.com - an online portal dealing in Furniture and Home Decor items. Started by industry experts from the IITs and BITS-Pilani in 2012, it intends to organize the entire Furnishings and Home Decor space in India by providing customers with a transparent pricing model, better designs and more options at one place.

Proud to have become the “biggest online dealer in the bean bags segment”, the co-founder of Mebelkart, Ranjeet Vimal, shares his story and aspirations with us.

So, what was the impetus behind this venture?

Ranjeet: I was looking to buy an agronomic computer chair for my personal use. But, to my utter dismay, I found that the local shops were selling them at very high costs. Moreover, I had very few options to choose from with no warranty either. Reluctantly, I settled for a revolving chair of Rs. 8000 with an added delivery charge of Rs. 500.

I discussed the situation with my friends who said that they’d had similar experiences with Bean Bags, Almirahs, Mattresses, etc. We also concurred that vision accompanied by will technology was all it needed to organize the furniture space in India and enhance user’s buying experience. And, consequently in July 2012 Mebelkart.com was born. Understanding buyer’s grievances and aspirations was crucial to building a portal where people can buy furniture suiting their varied tastes easily from the comfort of their homes. Our hard-work has paid off – we are already operational in Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune and are soon expanding to Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Considering your ambitious expansion plans, what market size are you tapping?

Ranjeet: The size of this market is US$ 12 billion which includes home/office furniture and home decor. Of this, 85% of the market is unorganized and fragmented. Even the corporate deliveries are handled by local players. With the increase in online penetration from 10% to 28% by 2015, this sector will definitely witness a huge boom.

What types of customers are you catering to presently?

Ranjeet: We have a lot of customers browsing our products, spending time on the portal and purchasing items. They mostly comprise of working professionals and youth who order online. We also deal with startups and small medium enterprises that prefer bulk purchases.

But, is the response competitive enough? Wouldn’t people still prefer a physical store over an online portal?

Ranjeet: The response has been good so far, the sales are rising every week and we have been receiving a fair amount of enquiries. To a certain extent potential customers prefer visiting a physical store as they are apprehensive about the design, prices and quality. The latest trends might be unknown to them. These are the very issues that we attempt to override via Mebelkart by providing a large selection and conducting regular quality checks. We are confident that this will go a long way in building customer trust and interest in online shopping. And in terms of reach, we can reach over 1000's of zip codes in India which is practically impossible for any showroom chain.

Market MebelKart.com – how do you go about this?

Ranjeet: Mebelkart is using the preferred ways of promotion as other startup companies which include social media, adwords, blogs, newsletters & most importantly customer referrals. We are very rigid on providing utmost satisfaction to the customer.

How do you distinguish yourself from the competition in this segment?

Ranjeet: The competition in this market is immense. Etailing in India is growing at a good pace. Although, this is still an untapped market for etailers, the competition among etailers in this segment is also on the rise. The advantage we have over traditional showrooms range from availability of designs, better & uniform costs. Approximately 70% of the customers still get items made by choosing the design from the catalogs of these showrooms. So, there is definitely a huge room for etailers in this segment. We improvise continuously – be it virtualization of user experience, including more categories, etc., brainstorming and delivering is our forte.

What are your plans and aspirations for the future?

Ranjeet: We are building web & mobile technologies for making a customer's selection procedure & purchase easier. We are expanding our operations in other cities Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai and also adding more categories to our portfolio alongside.

Have you raised any funding yet? If no, would you want investors to reach out to you?

Ranjeet: We are bootstrapping the business from our own funds. Yes, we are looking for Angels.

Any closing message for budding entrepreneurs?

Ranjeet: I'm sure you have heard this before - but succeeding in starting a company is all about great execution and quick execution. The quality and speed of execution are most important. You can't compromise either one! Apart from this, holding your nerve at the right times is important too. Every startup goes through a phase where things will took mighty tough - you just have to walk through it and do your best. There is a very popular line about start-up “start-up -> the Valley of Death -> to take risks and experiment”.

Get Famous Items From One Place - Shopatplaces

2013-02-10T14:00:00.001+05:30

Are you looking to buy some famous and popular things from their localized cities. Now you can get it from Shopatplaces. The team at shopatplaces is dedicated towards bringing things that are popular. For e.g. Lucknowi Chikankari , Kolhapuri Chappals etc. We had a talk with Zuhaib, Founder of Shopatplaces to know more about how they are currently doing it and how their plans for future.

What is the concept behind Shopatplaces?

Zuhaib: Shopatplaces is an e-commerce site which delivers Authentic Products from Places Famous for them to the clients’ home. We can be summarized by the tagline, ‘Famous Products. Best Buys.’

We all love authentic products but have difficulty in getting products of the highest quality at for the correct prices. Who does not want to own Pashmina shawls of from Kashmir or handcrafted Bandhej suits from Jaipur? Demand for such authentic products never diminshes. The problem areas are of authenticity verification, availability and quality assurance and of course, the right price. The maze of unnecessary levels in the supply chain is the culprit behind the many-fold increase in prices.

Shopatplaces eliminates all these problems at once! So, 'Famous Places. Best Buys.' with convenience of shopping from home or office.

How did you come up with the name 'Shopatplaces'?

Zuhaib: Our idea, right from the start, was to make available to customers authentic and unique products from places popular for them. And the brand name had to reflect that clearly.

'Silk Route' was the one which we had initially toyed with as it symbolised the trade in such products from particular places. However, there is an Indian band with this name and hence, copyright issues and all.

Next one which was thrown about was 'Authentic India', for obvious reasons. However, we wanted to keep products from other countries as well and with this name it would have been difficult to do so.

Then, 'Shop At Places' was suggested by my friend's young niece and this was the one which seemed just right. We kept the tagline as 'Famous Places. Best Buys.' and never had to explain the concept of Shopatplaces to anyone after that.

How are you different from other online retailers in India?

Zuhaib: We are not selling brands as the other players are. We provide an opportunity to customers to possess products which are famous from a particular place. Be it Filigree jewelry from Odisha, Brass jewelry from Uttar Pradesh, Tussar silk stoles with Kantha embroidery from West Bengal, Block printed kurtis from Jaipur and so on.

We make these hard to find products easily available to our customers with a guarantee of quality and authenticity, coupled with a promise of best buy. We ensure that we always sell our products at a price which is much lower than the retail price of those products from the places they are sourced from.

We are the first ones in India to execute this idea of ‘Shop At Places’. FabIndia is our close peer but we are not into handcrafted products only.

What are the biggest challenges that you have faced in your entrepreneurial journey?

Zuhaib: Setting up a robust vendor base has been our biggest challenge as we deal with artisans and small manufacturers unlike other players who are retailing branded goods. We left our jobs and traveled across small towns and villages, or Bharat, as we call it, for 6 months straight. During this travel, we learnt a lot and gained conviction that our model will work. There are many supply side constraints, like availability of raw materials, for which we work with our vendors and help them.

Another instance of a peculiar supply chain is of Chikankari apparel from Lucknow. A Chikankari apparel can take up to 6 months to create. Hence, inventory has to be maintained for this particular subcategory and no real time ordering can be done for such products by anyone.

We face new challenges everyday and work with all our might to make the customers smile when they get our products in their hands.

Who all are behind Shopatplaces? Please tell us about their backgrounds too.

Zuhaib: The young founding team is comprised of two, Sherfur and myself, Zuhaib. Sherfur has worked in the Procurement and Supply Chain team of Cadbury-Kraft after getting his MBA from NITIE, Mumbai. I have worked in various IB & PE firms like JP Morgan, Mape Advisory and Casa Capital after finishing my MBA from FMS, Delhi. We were classmates during our engineering days in Jamia, Delhi.

What will Shopatplaces be doing in the future?

Zuhaib: Our immediate plan is to have authentic products from all states of India within the first 12 months of our launch and we are already working on it. So you can expect a number of product launches in the coming months. We also want to increase the number of categories we offer to our customers.

Our long term plan will be to provide internationally known products like Italian leather boots or Indonesian batik print apparel to our users. In a few years’ time, we aim to be the most trusted retailer in the minds of our customers.

Which all locations are you getting orders?

Zuhaib: We are already delivering orders across India and have been getting orders from both Metros and small cities. We hope to start delivering internationally soon - maybe in a month only.

Have you raised any funding yet? If no, would you want investors to reach out to you?

Zuhaib: No, we have not raised any funds till now. We are bootstrapping the business from our own funds and will not go out in the market for fund raising till the time we need a significant infusion. We want to have two numbers on board before we actively seek funds - satisfied customer numbers and revenue numbers.

However, we are actively looking out for mentors and advisors. We believe that advice of experienced mentors is worth much more important than only money. We would be happy if we are contacted by experienced industry veterans who like Shopatplaces and would want to help us grow it.

Flipkart launched ebook application on android platform; Enforcement Directorate to probe Flipkart

2012-11-28T21:15:00.002+05:30

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart announced today the launch of ebook application on Flyte digital store. To woo the customers company has offered 4000 free ebooks to download. Currently, total number of ebooks are close to 70,000. If you compare between the price of ebooks available on digital store is little less than physical books. From our sources we got to know that they are soon coming up with Windows app too.

Looks like Flipkart is going an Amazon way. Currently Amazon controls about 60 percent of the e-book market share. Overall the market share in US and European markets for digital trade books is currently at 50%. In the US, the eBooks market recently crossed $1 billion in annual sales. Indian markets are also getting matured and we see the spiral growth in digital book readership.

ED to probe Flipkart

Couple of months back BusinessWorld has covered a very good story on FDI in Indian Ecommerce titled “FDI Escapades”. It has covered majority of big daddy of Indian online retail Industry highlighting how e-tailers have created multiple identities to get around the foreign direct investment regulations.

Flipkart is also one of them and it is now under the scanner for allegedly violating FDI rules. FDI regulation allows e-commerce companies with foreign investment to carry out B2B transactions but not B2C transactions.

Typically, all foreign funded E-commerce companies are allowed to do wholesale trading with B2C companies that are unrelated and can do wholesale trading with a group company only if it does not exceed 25 per cent of its total turnover and is used for internal consumption. Many ecommerce companies are alleged for flouting these rules by creating multiples shell companies to show transactions.

Image Credit: Flipkart

KaiseDiya.com - Online Grocery Store in Mumbai

2012-11-27T19:41:00.000+05:30

KaiseDiya.com is a Hindi name. It means by asking " What is the cost" from a seller. It is an online grocery store in Mumbai. started by Sachin Pikle. He comes from a technology and eCommerce consulting background. He has handled various eCommerce assignments with both global and Indian retail giants like Walmart, Future Group and others in the last few years. Previously he has been associated with global Banking and Insurance majors like Westpac, J.P. Morgan, American Express and others. Sachin Pikle holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from Mumbai University and has over 15 years of diverse industry experience. We had a talk to know more about his current venture KaiseDiya.com

What is your site all about? What problem are you solving?

KaiseDiya.com is all about Quality, Convenience, Price and Service. We call it the KaiseDiya.com experience.KaiseDiya.com, our first etail venture, is Mumbai's youngest online market for groceries and household supplies. At the moment we cater to customers in the western suburbs of Mumbai from Dahisar to Jogeshwari.

With rising fuel prices and high retail inflation, we hope to bring some relief to our customers by providing good quality grocery and household supplies at prices lower than the nearest kirana/provision/convenience stores, and even big supermarket chains. We realize that your time is precious and you have far more important things in life than wasting it in the crowded aisles and long checkout queues of supermarkets and dealing with rickshaw refusals!

Now you can order online from the comfort of your home or office, sit back and relax while we do your grocery runs and deliver them right at your doorstep. And what’s more, you can pay by cash after verifying the delivered goods!

Tell us the story of how it started and the challenges you have faced?

Having contributed to the way technology and internet have simplified people’s lives there, I have always dreamt of providing a similar, if not better, experience to fellow Indians living back home. I believe KaiseDiya.com will help me realize this dream!

KaiseDiya.com has been started with the aim of giving people access to a hassle-free, cost effective and convenient way to shop for their ongoing household supplies and groceries at discounted prices. We feel this service will most benefit senior citizens, women and busy working families who hardly have the time and energy to visit supermarkets. Plus people need a better alternative to arrogant local street vendors, hawkers and shopkeepers. And to add to this is the burden of rising fuel prices and high retail inflation. We want to make a difference by bringing some relief to our customers in these difficult times.

The biggest challenge for us has been creating awareness and reaching our target audience. The next big changing ahead of us is changing the consumer mindset and inspiring confidence with online shopping of groceries and household supplies.

Who are the Founders and their backgrounds?

Sachin Pikle inspired and ably supported by parents, wife and sister without whose support this wouldn’t have become a reality. Quitting a high profile, well-paying job to pursue my dream has been a personal challenge. I come from a technology and eCommerce consulting background.

Why is your site so different when Bigbazaar has already started operations in Mumbai?

We believe in relationships, not money. We go out of the way to keep our customers happy even if it means we pay from our pocket. Personalized attention and sharing revenue by way of discounted offerings helps us make a difference in the lives of our customers and the community at large.

Our site provides a number of convenient features like one-step reordering of previous orders, substitution of out-of-stock items, advanced order with weekend delivery, faster checkout, flexible delivery options, free delivery and payment by cash on delivery. We have a no-questions-asked-return-policy.

Our previous association with eCommerce majors gave us the much needed insights in to how the etail sector works both globally and in India.

What technology platform is your site built on? Is it in-house?

We have used one of the leading open source eCommerce platforms for our initial launch. The front end and site customization has been handled in-house.

What initiatives are you planning in the next 2-3 years?

A number of initiatives including expanding our delivery footprint, introducing additional payment and delivery options, introducing new features on the site and building a strong supplier network. We are increasing our range of product offerings daily and we continue to invest in these areas. Same day delivery and order by phone will be live in the next quarter.

Which all locations are you offering services?

At the moment we cater to customers in the western suburbs of Mumbai from Dahisar to Jogeshwari with plans of expanding to other parts of Mumbai.

What is your Marketing/Promotional approach?

Keeping in mind our target audience and geography, we plan to leverage the print media and social networks to create awareness and spread the word around. We have over 1500 quality products on sale and run various promotions like Cyber Monday deals and others to share our margins with our customers.

Did you raise any funding? If you want to raise funds do you want to be contacted by Investors ?

It gives us great pride in saying that KaiseDiya.com is a self-funded initiative. Considering our massive expansion plans we would be open to likeminded potential investors.

What is the overall plan going forward?

We continue to invest our blood, time and energy in this initiative. The overall plan is to move towards our goal of becoming Mumbai’s best online supermarket.

Your take on the current eCommerce scene in India ?

We see a lot of potential in this space in the next five years. The Indian consumer mind-set is changing and people have now opened up to the idea of buying clothes, electronics and shoes online something that was unheard of previously. We would like to be catalyst of change in the area of online groceries. The percentage of people buying online groceries today is far lesser than other consumer goods but we are hopeful we can be the difference.

Mahesh Bhupathi backed India's Online Sports and Fitness Store

2012-11-26T18:14:00.000+05:30

Live Sports365 E-Retail Pvt. Ltd (www.sports365.in) is India’s first professionally managed sports and Fitness Company. The group runs one of India’s finest e-Commerce stores which offers more than 8000 products from 100 brands, both national and international. Sports365 is your one stop shop for sports equipment online. From badminton racquets, sports shoes and apparel and cycling gear to fitness products like yoga mats and so on Sports365 is your one stop shop for sports equipment online. The institutional business unit offers turn-key solutions in terms of sports infrastructure, apparel and infrastructure to corporates, schools and colleges, sports clubs and academies, residential properties, fitness centers and hotels.

Sports365 is the coming together of management professionals with a passion for sports and accomplished sporting icons. (The leadership team comprises of Sekhar Reddy and Mahesh Bhupathi.) We are also supported by Yuvraj Singh, Dipika Pallikal, Lara Dutta and Pankaj Adavni who play a prominent role. We spoke with Sekhar about this venture and here is an excerpt of our interesting conversation.

First up, sports based e-Commerce is a fairly niche area in India. How did the idea emerge?

The common denominator is our “unrelenting passion for sports”. The idea actually germinated during one of our regular badminton games. Having felt the need for such a company, as customers we realized that it is an attractive business opportunity. What followed was a three month long process of internal discussions and debates, sounding off the ideas with experts and friends and some amount of business planning. The outcome was a unanimous “go ahead” and then we started the boot strapping process.

How has the experience been so far in this very exciting area?

We are about a year old and this has been the most exciting time of our lives.

Our online sports store, www.sports365.in, offers more than 8,000 products covering almost all sporting disciplines. We have managed to secure tie-ups with all leading international and national sports brands. Our website user interface has received very good feedback from the customer and this can be attributed to “Live Chat” feature on the portal, which allows customers to interact with sports experts which aids them in making informed buying decisions. This is also complemented by our comprehensive buying guides for various products.

With 4,000+ active customers, the response has exceeded our expectations. We have a very strong and active community on our social media properties (Face book, Twitter, Blog). The innovative and refreshing promotions that we conduct from time to time have garnered some wonderful feedback from our customers.

On the institutional front, we have worked with close to 100 some marquee names like Intel, Accenture, Amazon, ISB, IIM Bangalore to name a few. We offer comprehensive solution based models to each of our customers. For instance, the School Partnership Program for which we are tied up with Nike and the PACE Premier Academies and Clubs Enablement program. Our offerings to corporates, schools and academies are centered on sports apparel, sports footwear and sports gear that have been very well received.

What do you think are the main challenges facing the segment today and how do you plan to address them?

From our perspective there are primarily three challenges that we face. Firstly, access to good quality sports merchandise outside metro locations is a big challenge. To address this problem we offer shipping to the 6 lakh odd postal codes in the country with options like cash on delivery and free shipping. We also make available 8000 products for a number of sports disciplines across 90 brands. Secondly, customers have limited buying advice and consequently this affects their purchase decisions. By incorporating a “Live Chat” and buying guides for various products we aim to change this scenario.

Lastly, affordability is another challenge customers face today. Due to availability and supply constraints most of the sporting merchandise is still being sold at steep prices. In order to mitigate this problem, we work with our brand partners to source products at better prices and ensure operational efficiencies which consequently get translated into better, more affordable prices.

You have some eminent names like Mahesh Bhupathi, Yuvraj Singh, Dipika Pallikal, Lara Dutta and Pankaj Advani lending support to the company. What is the thought behind this and how challenging was it to get them on-board?

Right from the inception, we wanted www.sports365.in to be a “sports company run by the sports experts for the sports lovers”. To fulfill this objective, it is important for us to have credible sports and fitness personalities lending support to the business.

We wanted the enterprise to be a part of all aspects of business and hence each of these sporting icons have a role in several aspects like sourcing, vendor relations, customer engagement, planning and not merely marketing alone. They are experts who understand sports as well as customer needs as well as anyone can. In terms of tying up with these personalities, we believe that it is our conviction and a genuine vision to promote sports which has made this endeavor possible.

How do you see your company growing over the next 2-3 years?

We believe that the mindset towards sports is changing as our country is witnessing a “sports revolution” and we aim to capitalize on that. To begin with, in the next couple of years we see ourselves as a dominant player in the e-Commerce market. On the B2B front we aim to acquire 1000 institutional partners in the next 24 months. We would also like to create credible business property around customer engagement and bring a range of international products on our website that are suited to the needs of Indian customers.

THE COUPONS STORY IN INDIA – LEVEL PLAYING FIELD NEEDED

2012-11-26T09:22:00.000+05:30

The story of discount coupons in India is in its infancy and is all set to grow to huge proportions as the online and retail industry grows. It is at this stage, that one needs to look at and address certain areas in coupon promotion to create a standardized and level playing field to avoid needless controversy in the future.

Discount coupons in India are distributed directly by the merchant to customers and through affiliates and partners as well. By giving discount coupons to affiliates and partners the merchant accesses the user base of the affiliate and partner and converts some of the users as well. The partner and affiliate provides access to the merchant to a larger base for a reward or commission. Despite appearing like a win-win situation there are a few discrepancies in the process. These discrepancies are best solved right now before the market matures.

Single-use Coupons Better than Multi-use coupons

In India the current practice is that merchants offer two types of coupons – single-use and multi-use coupons. As their names suggest single-use coupons can be used only once while multi-use coupons can be used many times. Clearly the multi-use coupons reach many more people because it travels faster on the net and through social networking sites, forums, employees of big corporate etc. A single-use coupon has limited visibility because it cannot be shared.

Though it has limited visibility a single-use coupon is in the better interests of the industry as a multi-use coupon affects the merchant and partner/affiliate relationship adversely. A multi-use coupon that gets leaked across the internet brings no branding value to the merchant when it gets leaked across the partner channel. When it is shared on the net, it will be done without any T&Cs for the coupon. A potential customer who is unaware of the T&Cs may find the coupon not valid and goes away from the merchant site with bad experience. One bad experience could affect the merchant adversely as customers express their experiences on several sites which could have a cascading effect.

Secondly, the merchant is rewarding the affiliate / partner for nothing in the case of multi-use coupons. When the coupon gets leaked out, the affiliate / partner is not adding any value but he is still getting rewarded. The merchant can with some effort achieve that objective themselves.

Differentiating between Partners / Affiliates Through Coupons

Sometimes merchants use the coupons to differentiate between their partners and affiliates which is not in keeping with the spirit of the industry. Some affiliate / partners are given single-use coupons and some are given multi-use coupons. The partners who get single use coupons are at a disadvantage and have to promote the coupon many times more than a partner who got multi-use coupons to get the same results.

In other cases merchants give better coupons to performing partners and less value coupons to nonperforming partners which again discriminates the partners. Typically partners are limited by their reach – a bigger partner performs better because of his reach and a smaller partner’s performance could be lower because he has smaller reach. By giving less attractive coupons to smaller partners, merchants are not creating a level field again and instead ensuring that the smaller partners fail. Such practices could lead to unethical practices and non-standardized processes developing in the industry. The merchant could avoid this possibility by sharing similar coupons (need not be necessarily exact) with all the partners but choosing to share more commission / incentivize better for better performing partners.

Merchant’s responsibility to create level playing field

In the end it is the merchant’s responsibility to create a fair and level playing field so the industry develops on sound, transparent and ethical practices which are fair to all. Moreover as transparency and standardization is the key to building brands and customer loyalty it is in the best interests of all stakeholders to standardize coupons quickly and create a level playing field.

Views in this Article are expressed by R. Rama Raju – CEO of Marketing Promotions Company – http://www.UPto75.com

20 Ways to Increase Ecommerce Conversion Rate

2012-11-19T14:48:00.000+05:30

Internet Retailers are spending a lot of money on Advertisements on Electronic and Print media to get more and more customers. Many of them are successful in getting traffic to their websites, but eventually not turning them into buyers. Typically, Industry average for conversion is close to 1-2 % of the total traffic. Can we make it to 4-5%? How can you convert first time visitor to your customer? What are the best practices for any online retailer to get more conversion?

Below is the check list:

Free shipping is a boon : Homeshop18, Yebhi and few others have zero shipping charges while firstcry, zivame, cilory etc. have a minimum purchase amount to avail free shipping. This is fascinating for the buyers who are cost-sensitive.
Sales and special offer: The prospective buyer should be made aware of the any special discount or festive offer running across any product. A buyer is price sensitive. He will browse through various online portals before buying a product. If the section for sales and offers is prominent on the site, he would surely look into it.
Pushing the prospective buyer from shopping cart page to payment page: At times, it happens that the buyer would add products in his cart but that would not result into sales. This could happen due to various reasons such as price-difference on other portals, fear of returns, exchange or refunds especially for first time buyers or may be due to heavy load on the site. This could be tackled by sending emails to registered users about their incomplete order status or popping the cart contents once the user has logged into her account. Tier 1 portals such as Yebhi.com and couple of others are sending emails to users to propel them into buying.
Alive your shopping cart: On various portals the shopping cart contents vanish once the user has logged out from his account or remain for a period of say 15 days. If the user wants to buy the selected product after a period of time, it would be cumbersome to again collect the same items and would not thus buy it.
Contact Us or Talk to Us: The customer care number and mail id should be prominent on portals. Especially for a first time user, who is apprehensive of buying from a new portal, the phone no should come handy. Buyer should be able to clear his/her doubts regarding returns, cancellations etc.
Offer multiple payment options: It is always good to have multiple payments options such as debit card, credit card, net banking, PayPal and last but not the least Cash on Delivery. Generally, many payment gateways offers all the options but you have to negotiate with them on setup cost and commission on transaction value.
Unique selling point: Always communicate why you are different or what is unique about your portal. If you are selling something that nobody is selling. Highlight even in the Home page itself. It may not be a product, it can be express delivery, packaging or freebees, it is better to tell upfront. It will increase customer retention time to your portal
How good is Your search: Typically, people find product while browsing through your website, but sometime people are very specific to a particular product that they might have seen to your competitor. Search button very much comes into the picture, people would like to type the item or similar items. It is always good to have an automated drop-down menu of textual results. It will give the buyer exact product without wasting much time. It can lead to a conversion.
Top Class Product Images: What you will show on your site, is what people will buy. Unlike in a brick and mortar store where customers get an actual feel of the product they are buying, in an online store it is very important to use good quality images of the products. Additional features such as zooming or 360 degree view of the product would be quite appealing for buyers, who in turn can get a feel of the product they intend to buy.
Product Description: A product image would be incomplete without any description, whether it is an electronic good or a non-branded appear. People would like know its features , specifications before they buy it. The product information should be such as to remove all doubts from the prospective buyers minds.
Product videos: Video of the product adds value in understanding it better. For e.g. In case of a jewellery set, a good quality video of the model wearing the set will let the buyer know as to how the particular necklace set would look from different angles. In a still photo it would not be possible. Homeshop18 uses videos for few of its jewellery collection
Sub Categories for Products: If you are selling many things it is better to create sub categories . It will help buyers to navigate through your website smoothly. It is difficult sometimes when you present many choices to customers, he may lost between many clicks.
Show shopping cart while customers are picking more items: it is advisable to show the shopping cart items while customers are browsing and picking more items. If a customer is buying 10-12 item, typically in case of grocery item, it is better to show him what price and what all items he/she has added to the shopping cart. It will reduce the effort of the buyers to go back and forth.
Checkout as a guest: Shoppers are very smart. They know once they register to your website, you may start sending promotional material to them or share their data. It is good to provide them easy options such as “Checkout as a guest” or “ Login with Facebook” etc. Don’t force people to register or even login to facebook account. However what can be done, once a shopper buys from your portal , you can send login and auto-generated password for his further purchases.
Testimonials: Product Reviews or testimonials are very important. People believe in other people. It gives them the true picture about the product, their experience. Most of the buyers read the product reviews before buying any product. It helps a lot in conversion. Get as many as testimonial to your websites.
Cross-sell and Upsell with a bigger discounts: People shop in In-store and end up buying more while they reach to the billing counter. Some chocolate , candy bar, mouth freshener etc. For Online Retail – the trend has not started yet, but it is good to sell certain things. More analytics is involve in online retail compare to brick and mortar store. Here you know what all item a buyer has picked up, you can offer something like if he has bought shoes, you can sell him socks with discount.
Call to Action: As they say, what is visible is what gets sold. But it is good to provide that button very prominently , may be in different color and in a bigger shape and font size. It sometime coerce buyers to click on it. It is all behavioural science.
Return Order: it is good to show Return order button. It gives confidence to buyer if he doesn’t like the product at least he has an option to return it.
Out of Stock: Don’t leave your buyers with out of stock option, if you are confident that you can replenish the goods in few days’ time. Let them add to cart and you can intimate immediately by current standing and when you are going to supply it.
Minimum Number of clicks to complete the Sales cycle: Every shopper would like to get things in minimum number of clicks possible. If you are showing the clear progress indicator, it would be good for a buyer to see where exactly he has reached in his cycle completion.

How can Internet Retailers become profitable?

2012-11-16T19:38:00.002+05:30

Acquiring an online customer cost close to INR 1500 to many Internet retailers. This is a huge cost considering the order size, etailers receive. The cost can be justified only through multiple repeat purchases. This is an area companies should look to reduce acquisition cost or increase sales. New etailers are mushrooming every other day and customer loyalty is hard to achieve in India. Tier-1 companies are seeing huge demand so they are comfortable at this point in time but not for much longer time.

Couple of other things like high inventory cost and shipment cost are creating huge burden on etailers. High inventory cost as companies are holding lot of inventory to receive bulk discount from their suppliers that they can pass it on to the end consumers and for Shipment cost – Many etailers have their own in-house setup to deliver goods, this requires high initial setup cost, but lower delivery cost, while many have outsourced it and paying more per transaction. It is totally depending on the scale of operation.

Typically, for any company there are two cost associated Fixed and Variable. Fixed cost can be reduced on per item basis as volume starts growing. Many have started scaling their operations and growing rapidly to reduce fixed cost but investing more month on month on various marketing activities in turn increasing the cost. It’s a vicious circle. But other costs like warehouse, shipping, packaging can be reduced.

There are couple of innovative business models that many etailers are now focusing on to increase profitability.

Multi-category Retailing – Firstcry has got Goodlife to cross sell many other products that can be added to a single cart and shipped together. Similarly Fashion and You earlier started with Women apparel has diversified to Men, kids clothing, Home décor , electronic goods etc.
White Label products – SherSingh (bough by Myntra) sells products on their own brand names
Deals sites became retailers – Snapdeal converted into a proper etailer
Just in Time model –(JIT) – Etailers became digital storefront, like Aaramshop.com. They carry almost zero inventory. Once the order reaches to them they pick and deliver the goods.
Bulk and off-season buying – Many Internet retailers buying things off season to get deep discounts and sell 3-4 months down the line with good profitability.

Image credit: Zinnov

Source: Zinnov

Online Retail Acquisitions – Are Investors Cutting Losses?

2012-11-16T11:18:00.001+05:30

It’s almost 5 years and we saw huge traction in online buying. Industry is new. But players are many. In-store retailers are also making an appearance on Internet. Investors have already put money in e-commerce. In 2009 – USD 105 million, In 2010 – USD 111 million and In 2011 – USD 908 million. Nobody is willing to miss the bus. The result – we have hundreds of etailers evolved within no time. Many of them have received huge funding from common investors. Top lines of many tier-1 retailers are growing multifold year on year but bottom line is getting a hit. Reason is Intense competition and every company is trying to grab the customers resulting in huge marketing cost and upfront discount. This is the driving force for many investors to Consolidate – join the two firms into one. The benefit – it will lower down the fixed cost and improve operational efficiency.

Many acquisitions happened to increase the product lines and it can give an inorganic growth to these companies.

The list of Recent Acquisitions

Acquirer	Acquiree
Flipkart	Letsbuy
Snapdeal	Grabbon, Esportsbuy
Yebhi	Stylishyou.in
Myntra	SherSingh, Exclusively.in
HealthKart	Madeinhealth
Fashionandyou	UrbanTouch

Ecommerce: Online Travel Vs Online Retail

2012-11-15T12:36:00.001+05:30

In India, Ecommerce phenomenon started with services side, people bought railway tickets, airline tickets, concerts ticket passes, Cricket Match ticket, Deals, Mobile recharge etc. Out of these the volume of online ticketing is huge. Things have changed and now people are buying books, apparel, electronics, home accessories and anything you can think of. It’s all about convenience and good deal what people generally quote. Current trend shows that E-tailing to grow 4 times as fast as online travel.

Data shows that Books are the first choice for buying online followed by online tickets, electronics and local deals.

Goods Vs Services: Buying services online haven’t face much problems compare to buying online products . Goods generally give a feeling to our senses like touch , feel and experience while for services you can only experience. Delivery of services are instant while delivery of goods take times. To overcome these shortfalls, E-commerce companies have built couple of good practices to serve their customers better.

Trust is being built by extensive marketing as well as offering fraud proof options like COD (Cash on Delivery ).
Electronics and Books doesn’t require much touch and feel and they are the top selling items online
Companies are offering close to 30% discount to grab market share
Major costs are logistics and Inventory management. Barrier to entry is less.

Source: Avendus Report; Morgan Stanley Research; Comscore; Zinnov Primary Survey

Indian Ecommerce: Current Trends

2012-11-14T10:13:00.002+05:30

It is almost certain that the next blue ocean in India is going to be ecommerce. There are some of facts that exactly give us the holistic picture of ecommerce Industry. Indian retail market will be worth 900 bn USD by 2014 and out of which online contribution is just 0.47%, while the global Industry average is 4%. Our neighbour country China is very close to the Industry average. Number of people below the age of 35 is going to be closed to 828 Mn by 2015. This can be very interesting figure for all e-commerce companies in India. Adoption of new technology is also an important factor for fueling the growth of e-commerce Industry. Current trend shows that India will have 450 Mn smartphone users and close to 100 Mn 3G users by 2015. Most Important – The Internet - Close to 376 Mn unique internet users by 2015 and Current users: 120 Mn but we are still struggling with Infrastructure and bandwidth (High speed Internet).

Indian e-commerce revenue projected to reach USD 125-260Bn for the year 2024-25: Current revenue: USD 10 Bn

Source: Avendus Report; Morgan Stanley Research; Pricewaterhouse Coopers; Comscore; Zinnov

5 Things Before You Start Ecommerce Website

2012-11-05T15:22:00.000+05:30

In this article, we are not covering registering a business or any legal advice on whether you should register a sole proprietor or LLC or Pvt. Ltd. We are talking about things you should take care of before you are thinking of starting of e-commerce business

Vendor Management: Vendors are the most important part of the entire supply chain when you are starting an ecommerce site. Should you buy products and create inventory or should you rely on the vendors and give them the responsibility of getting things delivered or Just pick it up from the Vendors as and when you receive the order. Multiple things can be worked out, each have its own pluses and minuses. It also depends on the types of products you are selling on your website.

Web Portal : Should you have your own customized development or should it be SaaS(Software as a Service) based product platforms like Martjack, Shopify, Buildabazaar etc. Typically, all these Platform players also provide customized platform to suit your needs. Cost may vary from INR 25k – 1 Lac per month. Also, you can explore the option of getting it done from small IT companies those who have partnered with Magento, OS Commerce etc.

Payment Gateways: There are multiple payment gateways available in the market like CCavenue, Ebs.in, Directpay, ICICIpayseal, HDFC, PayU.in, Zaakpay.com, Linkpay.co.in. It’s better to integrate with two payment gateways, may be CCavenue/Ebs.in, both are good. But they are just an intermediary between banks/credit card processor and the merchants. Removing intermediary will improve payment success rate and reduce commission charged. So as you grow its important to integrate directly with credit card gateways like Axis bank/HDFC/Citi/ICICI. Success rate will be much higher in this case.

These payment gateways charge one time setup fee vary from as low as 0 to 40k depending upon how much transaction charges you are willing to share. More the transaction charges less is the setup fee.

Product Display: If you are selling branded stuff like electronics, watches, consumer durables etc. it would be easy to get product images and you don't need to incur any additional cost. But if you want to sell any unbranded or creating a white label product such as apparels, handicraft items etc. better show it properly. Getting a product image from studio will cost INR 100 -350 per image. It can be reduced depending on the quantity. You can do it by yourselves too.

Delivery Mechanism: Delivering goods in good condition and within stipulated time is always the key thing for any business. Bluedart, Indiaontime, Firstflight, Aramax and Chottu.in are some of your delivery boys you can trust upon. While company like chhotu.in follows altogether a different model, they claim to be not just your courier company but one step ahead that helps your sales happen. Where companies are burning lot of cash by offering COD and rejection, they make sure you lose the less.

MintM : Mobile Shopping and Reward System Platform

2012-10-30T15:16:00.001+05:30

Offline retail businesses are facing lots of challenges these days. Although they pay high rentals for the prime locations, they are still not able to get the desired footfalls. If a customer visits a shop, there is 25-90% chance (depending on nature of store) that he will do a transaction and that makes footfalls extremely important. This is exactly where MintM comes in Picture.

MintM is a bundle of few unique things which allows merchants to engage customers through various mechanisms like offers, loyalty rewards and open communication.

Sachin Garg, CEO at MintM say “With MintM, participating merchants can get to know who is looking for what and they can target them accordingly which is big leap in the future as all existing intelligence technologies revolve around analysing the past behaviour and throwing offers based on that and not exactly on current customer need.. The other highlight of MintM is its automatic In-store presence detection technology which will be used for first time in the world.”

For a merchant, there is no solution available in market be it card, smartphone or phone number based system which doesn’t require an action from the user. Most of the solutions involve user action which is either in the form of user taking out the loyalty card and showing it to the merchant or he has to launch a smartphone based app in the store. On contrary MintM works as fully automated system without the need of any user action. With MintM merchant gets mobile presence, increased loyalty, increased foot fall, better engagement with the existing users and deep customer insights, something a typical Retail CRM can’t provide. Simple analogy is what Google is to the online world by bringing in traffic to websites; MintM is doing the same for offline world by getting more footfalls for our partner merchants.

“At heart MintM is still a consumer company” – Says Sachin Garg. For users MintM makes their life simple. They can create a really simple yet smart Indian shopping list, share it with their friends and family and also get to know relevant offers from nearby participating stores. They can collect mints by visiting participating stores and convert them for exciting rewards like gift cards, coupons and prepaid recharges all on their mobile without the need of calling a customer care or getting on a website. They can do much more with MintM by storing their loyalty cards on their mobile, get it scanned at POS terminals and in the process freeing up their wallet with the need to carry those cards for reward points. Currently MintM users gets mints for visiting stores like Central, Mom&Me, Cinemax, Pizza-Hut, Reliance Digital, HyperCity, Big-Bazaar. Many more are in the process of being added.

On international markets, MintM is still focused only on India but has been approached by several overseas businesses to start operating there as well. MintM may start to look at expanding other countries in near future.

MintM was founded by Sachin Garg and Vibhor Gupta who are IIT and ISB alumni in March 2012. Both of them have been associated with running a technology company successfully for over 6 years. Prior to that Sachin worked with companies like Cisco, Intel and Motorola and also holds a couple of patents in his name. Vibhor who is co-founder at MintM holds an MBA from prestigious Indian School of Business and earlier worked with Tech companies like Infosys, Cognizant and Wipro. MintM has been funded to the tune of 500K USD and is also looking for external investment to increase its merchant base throughout India and overseas.

Users can download MintM app from www.mintmapp.com. It is also available on Google Play Store for Android Phones, iTunes for iPhone and BlackBerry App world. It has been designed keeping in mind the changing needs of Indian customer. The app has so far over 75,000 users and has been consistently ranked in TOP 10 in shopping category on App markets.

Barilliance: Offering personalized shopping experience

2012-10-24T22:55:00.004+05:30

Barilliance helps e-commerce sites of any size to increase sales and conversion rates by providing visitors with a personalized shopping experience. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery and Zero Integration technology are making it super easy for online retailers to reap the benefits of products they offer without upfront investment. Barilliance was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel. We had a talk with Ido, Co-founder of Barilliance.com to understand where the company is heading and what the next big thing company is planning.

What is Barilliance.com and what services are you providing to Online Retailers?

Barilliance enables e-commerce marketers to improve key business metrics by utilizing a suite of personalization products that can be setup in 5 minutes using a single tag. The Barilliance SaaS products suite presents visitors with personalized real time product offers and targeted content across multiple channels based on the visitor’s current intent, past behavior as well as the behavior of similar visitors.

How are you different from any of your competitors?

We have competitors who offer one or two of the products suite we offer but we are the only provider which offers a complete suite of personalization products that was developed specifically for e-commerce sites. Additional differentiators include:

Setup takes less than 5 minutes and requires the site to add one tag. Integration of competitive products takes days/weeks.
Our email personalization product works with every email service provider (such as iContact, MailChimp etc).
Our products leverage the user’s social graph (Facebook) and allow marketers to engage visitors in new ways.

Tell us something about you and how did this idea come to you mind?

We noticed that retailers do not personalize the online shopping experience and their email communication with customers. In addition e-commerce platforms have been closed systems and every small change required an IT project. We decided to develop a platform that would allow marketers to use various personalization techniques and that would not require upfront investment and ongoing support from IT.

How many customers do you have and which all geography?

We work with 200+ ecommerce websites across 16 countries including India, Australia , US , Europe and South America

What all products do you have and any new product coming in the pipeline?

Our SaaS personalization platform includes 4 main products:

Product recommendations – Amazon’s style personalized product recommendations that display dynamic and personalized product offers such as cross-sells and upsells
Email personalization - allows marketers to add personalized product offers to any email marketing platform. Recommendations are based on the visitor’s activity on the e-commerce site
On Site behavioral targeting – enables marketers to change the content of the website based on predefined visitors’ segments (traffic source, search terms, time of day, loyalty etc)
Cart abandonment – the system sends automated email campaigns to shoppers who abandoned the shopping cart but started the checkout process

How are you doing your marketing?

A mix of Inbound, trade shows and direct sales

Who are your partners and how does this model work?

We partnered with various partners in the ecosystem. From eCommerce platforms such as Magento, Demandware, Netsuite and 3Dcart to ESPs, system integrators and marketing agencies.

Did you raise any funding ?

No, we've bootstrapped the company. We are profitable and growing quickly

Footsy - Selling Socks Online

2012-10-03T12:19:00.001+05:30

Footsy is focusing on socks and accessories that keep your feet happy. Based out of Bangalore, Footsy was Co-founded by Seema Seth and Pooja Mehta and was launched in February, 2012. Footsy aims to elevate socks to a must-have fashion accessory and to banish the conventional grey, brown and black socks. We had a discussion with the founders to know about their plans and where they see footsy in next 2-3 years’ time.

What is Footsy.in? What problem are you solving?

Footsy is India’s only ecommerce brand focusing on socks. We mean, the playful kind. Brands are not always about problem-solving. Footsy is more about adding delight to the finer details of your wardrobe. We've taken a mundane product and elevated it to a fun fashion accessory.

Tell us the story of how it started and the challenges you have faced?

Footsy was born from the need of elevating the mundane to a delightful product. The core brand concept is ‘play a little’ and that stays true to everything we do. We want you to get rid of the greys in your wardrobe, and step up in colour and style. Accessories add the finishing touches to your appearance, so why must you neglect your socks?

We haven’t faced any major challenges. But if we had to really articulate something, it would have to be our multi-tasking spirit. We’re a very small team, and playing multiple roles and wearing many hats requires a lot of energy. But, touch wood, it’s worked like a charm so far.

Why is Footsy so different when there are already ecommerce websites selling socks?

Footsy focuses exclusively on socks and related accessories. We’ve taken one product and explored all possibilities it can offer: knee-lengths, crew-lengths, ankle-lengths, sockettes, woolen snugglers, anti-skid, ruffle cuffs, five toe socks, one toe socks, stripes, polka dots, pastels, argyles, patterned, cartoon characters, and a lot more. And we’ve only just begun. We still have many more collections planned.

We have a strong focus on colour. We don’t house boring greys and browns. We curate our products based on its personality and colour-quotient.

What technology platform is Footsy built on? Is it in-house?

Footsy is built on Magento. For the not-so-tech savvy, Magento is an open-source ecommerce web application. Although we work with a external web development consultancy, the design was completely created in-house.

What initiatives are you planning in the next 2-3 years?

On brand initiatives – We are partnering with leading socks brands, expanding our product catalog, and reaching out to every corner of the country.

Which cities are in focus?

E-commerce allows us the luxury of pan-India presence. But we focus most of our marketing activities to Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi and Ahmedabad.

How are you doing Marketing?

100% of our marketing takes place on social media. We have a very active Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest page. We publish Facebook adverts for specific product promotions. We’re reaching out to a wide range of people – right from an average college student who needs socks for everyday use, to a mother buying socks for her little ones, to a CEO’s looking for a great quality product.

Did you raise any funding?

We're a self-funded company.

What is the overall plan going forward?

It’s a simple three-fold plan, that requires a lot of hard work and energy:

Customer acquisition. Product expansion. Brand expansion.

Mysportcart - Sports and Fitness Equipments Shop

2012-09-29T12:21:00.001+05:30

Mysportcart.com has been founded with a mission to fast deliver sports, health and fitness equipments at low price to the customer's doorsteps. Based on a customer centric approach, the company is devising innovative ways to bring quality products with many advantages like free shipping, cash on delivery, online and mobile payment options, and easy refund policies. Its founding members-graduates from IIT- foresee an unprecedented growth in the e-commerce culture in India where there already exists a large proportion of technological savvy population. By minimizing the delivery time, the company wants to create an environment of real shopping experience for its customers. We had a talk with Pankaj Garg, Founder of Mysportcart to understand more about his current and future plans.

What is my mysportcart.com and what value it brings to the table?

Sport is fast catching up dreams and imagination of common person. What earlier was mostly a luxurious hobby for few is now becoming professional aspiration for many. Thanks to improving medal tally in Olympics and increasing dominance in cricket. However world class sports equipments are yet not available in India beyond selected cities. The primary difficulty with offline retailers in other cities is to maintain inventory of expensive items. On the other hand, sports enthusiasts are very particular about specification of their sports gears and always want fresh equipment when they are spending a good amount on it.

mysportcart.com is an online shopping destination that caters these needs of sport enthusiasts in cities where stock is mostly not available or does not meet required specifications. Without compromising on quality and authenticity, we fast deliver our goods at low price to customers’ doorsteps.

Who are all founders in this venture?

mysportcart.com has been founded by graduates of IITs. Prior to venturing into ecommerce, we have worked for around a decade in leadership roles in technology companies. We are all sports lover, particularly cricket, table tennis and swimming. We also recruit people who have interests in sports.

How did this idea come to your mind?

I recently got associated with a sports club in Bharatpur, Rajasthan. The city is more known for its bird sanctuary. Last year, I was attending a cricket tournament where I noticed none of the playing teams had equipments even matching to the level of equipments in my last company. I casually shared this with my friend from Kanpur who could relate with the issue and the idea germinated in his head. While I was more excited to venture in education space, huge response to beta launch of mysportcart.com hooked all of us with it.

How are you competing with any other sports selling ecommerce companies?

As of now, we are actually not competing with any other company in the space. This is because India is inherently a very huge market and no one company can meet its demand level. Most of the market is still untapped and real competition will begin only after total supply starts exceeding demand level. We believe all other companies are helping in increasing sports awareness as well as building better ecosystem.

Our current focus is to continually source high quality sports and fitness equipments of leading domestic and international brands directly from manufacturers or authorized channels so as to provide best price along with best services.

How old is mysportcart.com and how many customer visits and what about conversion?

We just launched in April 2012 and have been getting a very encouraging response so far. Our volumes are growing by 50-60% every month. Our conversion factor is also fairly high since we are focused on one specific category.

What all product lines do you have and how many coming in near future?

Currently we have best brands available in sports and fitness segment. We will be adding outdoor adventure gears pretty soon. We already have shoes in our catalogue and sports apparels will also be in very soon.

What is your overall strategy going forward and where do you see mysportcart.com in next 2-3 years’ time?

Our strategy is to grow fast enough. Our efficiencies keep increasing as we continue to grow and cross some target levels However when we say grow, we do not mean just sales volumes but also our relationship with sports enthusiasts. We see ourselves contributing a lot more to the sports fraternity in next 2-3 years’ time. We also believe this a better strategy to market ourselves than spending endlessly on other marketing channels. For this reason, we have been able to provide better discounts to our customers.

Did you raise any funding? Are you looking for any VC/Angel funding?

As of now it is self-funded. We may look for funds only after meeting our targets of next six months.