This Indian E-Commerce Website Is Targeting Smaller Towns And Cities

The online commerce platform has exploded. Funny TV commercials from Flipkart and good marketing by Ebay India have made people aware of this new way to shop. ShopClues.com is a recent E-com player who is trying to bring the same experience of shopping to smaller towns and cities in India. We had a chat with Sanjay Sethi, CEO & Co-founder, ShopClues.com and this is what he had to say about his business.

Tell us something about ShopClues. How does the website work? Are you stocking goods on your own and selling or are you partnering with distributors/retailers for the selling part?
ShopClues is a ‘managed marketplace’ that simply provides a platform for connecting buyers and sellers, but we don’t hold an inventory. We started with the basic premise that online commerce should always be a reflection of offline retail. India has traditionally been a country of bazaars, strip malls, local (sell-it-all) kirana stores and the haats – basically a country of marketplaces. Similarly, ShopClues is a marketplace for the masses, with over 35,000 big and small merchants selling on our platform to millions of value-seeking buyers.

As an online marketplace, we only facilitate buyer-seller transactions and our job is to bring in customer traffic, provide infrastructure and develop trust between people who come to transact in this space. Another important aspect is to create and enforce policies and practices that enable merchants to do good business while customers have a great shopping experience.

How is your business different from other Indian e-commerce sites?
ShopClues has demonstrated that hyper-growth and profitability are not mutually exclusive in an e-commerce business. Growing at 600% year on year, the company rests on strong business fundamentals and follows a vision that is crystal clear. We’re an agile enterprise, with a passion for innovation, because we believe that leaders innovate and followers pivot.

As a ‘marketplace for the masses,’ we focus on the real middle-class in India, which is amply reflected in our product selection, pricing, as well as our merchant & customer profiles. Here are our key differentiators:

• ShopClues’ major customer base lies in non-metros and tier 2 and tier 3 cities that don’t have access to organised retail.
• Our merchant community is largely made up of small and medium businesses. Around 60% of our merchants have less than 5 employees and 59% have an annual turnover of about Rs 10 lakh. Also, for nearly 26% of these merchants, more than 50% of the business comes from online channels.
• We have a large catalogue in unstructured categories like apparel, home & garden, etc.
• Unbranded products or local/regional brands are very popular on our site.

Can you state 4 things that make you more tech-advanced than other e-com players?
ShopClues is a technology company that happens to be in the business of retail and our obsession with technology helps us innovate. We are more tech-advanced due to these key factors:

• Service-based approach to all our technology architecture, which helps us scale up with ease and innovate across our offerings.
• Extreme rigour in data analysis using latest technology innovations available in the market (for example, Hadoop). This data capture and processing capability powers all our functions including search, merchandising, marketing, etc.
• Strong focus on mobility – a three-pronged approach where mobility enables 1) operational efficiency (mobile app for pick-up boys), 2) merchant empowerment (merchant pocket store) and 3) customer delight (Android app for buyers).
• Cost of technology is low because of our technology architecture that can scale horizontally and integrate vertically.

Where are you headed now? What will be your next steps to expand your business?
India is the last largest untapped e-commerce market in the world and ShopClues is well-positioned to seize the opportunity that this mass market offers. In fact, the e-commerce opportunity in our target segment, the tier 2 and tier 3 cities, is growing even faster than the rest of the market. ShopClues can very well ride this wave by maintaining a laser focus on execution and by building on our differentiation.

What are your tips for new and budding start-ups?
Inefficiencies of today’s market become opportunities for tomorrow’s start-ups. So the possibilities are endless. Starting a business seems risky, but the fact is that enterprises might fail but entrepreneurs don’t. So prepare well and take the plunge.