In a bid to save the cost of logistics and ensure faster deliveries, the Gurgaon-based online marketplace
"We are moving towards dividing the country into different cities as opposed to regions for our shipments," said Radhika Aggarwal, chief business officer at ShopClues. "The idea of shipping from within the zone of a customer works perfectly for structured categories. The unstructured category might or might not benefit from this," she added.
The Silicon Valley-founded company will work with local courier partners for its zonal deliveries, which would save up to 25% costs, thereby yielding better margins for the marketplace and prices for the customers.
The same policy is being adopted by Alibaba-backed marketplace Paytm, which has been expanding its online-to-offline shipments across regions so that delivery time can be lessened.
"We are currently at 4 lakh sellers on our platform and plan to increase it to 12 lakh sellers by the end of 2016. This will also improve our
regional selections and price range of products, mainly from the tier-2 and 3 markets," said Aggarwal.
Shopclues was valued at $1.1 billion in its last round of funding, and is targeting profitability by mid next year.