Having witnessed the swift Big-3 boom that took over the smartphone sales in India, I soon realized that the e-commerce platforms had emerged to usher in the Retail-Kranti era in India. Having worked with the mobile giant – Nokia Mobile India for 12 years, in their mobile handset channel sales segment, I observed many big retailers, either suffer major losses or experience no growth at the hands of these up and coming e-commerce players. The growth was mostly aided either by their pocket friendly pricing policies or additional benefits and perks such companies offered on shopping online. The trend seemed very intriguing and appealing to me.In addition to that, after having achieved several milestones in my career and having significantly contributed towards Nokia, I had reached a point, where I felt the need of reinventing myself and build something of my own. Fascinated by the whole e-commerce concept, due to its flexibility and scalability, this is exactly when I realized that it was the right time to foray into the world of e-commerce.
With these ideas hovering around my head, I got in touch with Sanjeev Gulati, who I had known for more than a decade. Sanjeev was one of the biggest mobile handset retailers in India, from Gujarat. To my surprise, Sanjeev had also started thinking on those lines, enthused by major e-commerce developments. However, while everyone in e-commerce segment was focused on GMV, I applied a simple logic. I thought there was a huge potential in the segment and that creating a niche market would be a lucrative idea. Furthermore, we also identified certain loop holes in the segment, spurred by the weak hold over sellers by the Big-3 marketplaces. Brands were seen taking stringent actions against sellers, who were selling their products online without their approvals and consequently customers were being denied warranty claims too. In our more than a decade long careers, we had learnt that customer prefer to buy from sellers direct rather than conducting faceless transactions in market places especially when it involves the high value mobile phone purchases. Adding to our advantages, we had a considerable retail presence, with 96 stores by then and were also confident on our prices to the customers. After nearly 3 months of sleepless nights and background setting, we finally launched a hyper-local site for commerce – along with an Android app. We set up local logistics in almost 8 leading cities of Gujarat state and our promise was delivery within 3 hours at customers’ place with most authentic products. Nonetheless, we decided that we would accept orders from other states & markets as well, but were very clear that we would promote and spend marketing money only in these 8 cities and thereby launched the beta version of the website.
However, refuting our business theories and raising a few eyebrows, the first order that we received was from Bihar – Bhabua area. The ordered item was a smartphone worth INR 17,499. Although initially taken by disbelief, we considered it to be a hoax and continued to focus on the 8 cities. Nevertheless, we soon realized that we had started getting more than 50 orders a day, from the day of launch and at the end of the first week; we had shipped almost 350 mobile phones to customers residing out of Gujarat. In the whole scheme of things, what impressed us the most was; we had achieved all of that without much endeavour from our end and realized that more could be accomplished with focus and that was the turning point for our company.
We ramped up and soon set up a full-scale call-center and then tied up with almost all major shippers in India. In a week’s time, we were able to set up infrastructure, which could ship almost 300 orders a day and we were equipped to serve about 17,000 pin codes in India. Since beginning our focus has been on 3 elements –
- Differentiated customer support
- Prompt Delivery
- Pricing
Differentiated Customer Support
In order to have regular customer support executive, we decided to keep employees with good mobile technology understanding and do not have barriers of formalities.This was deliberate effort to ensure that customers feel just a like routine store representative while they call and ask questions. Prior to dispatching any order, every order is verified by our team of executives through customer calls. We do not verify orders by ‘CAPCHA’ or ‘SMS Code’. We understand that customers have tons of reservations and inhibitions when they have ordered a product online and therefore a call is a good way of reassuring them. Furthermore, detailed information of products reduces the ratio of return orders. Moreover, the warranty and brand authorization adds to the confidence of the customers. We help customers to choose the right model and ensure proper education to them. A well informed buying decision from customer is of prime importance for us.
Prompt Delivery
We are working with 2 ware houses – one in western part of India and another one at Chennai. This helps us ensure our delivery personnel take the fastest possible route to deliver the product once we dispatch the order. Today, we are dispatching almost 100% orders within 12 hours of receipt of the order and our deliver lead period is just 3 days. With a back up of 96 retail stores,we saved immensely on inventory at all are never short of material in case of demand spurt.
Pricing
Irrespective of all, we all are basically bargain hunters. We were able to keep our prices lower than the Big 3 and we are the only e-commerce site that does not addshipping cost in the customer invoice.
We have come a long way and today when we look back, our achievements make us swell in pride. It is surprising to see how fast we have changed and pivoted from Hyper-Local model to full-scale model. The ‘mantra’ of e-commerce is about scale and you have to remain innovative all the time.
We are also offering 30-Days-Price-Guarantee to our customers – which are novel in India. Customers get refund of the price difference back in their bank account if the price of their ordered item goes down within 30 days of their purchase. This is helping big time as it ensures more happy customers.
We also intend to launch pick-up services during the warranty period and submit it to authorized service centers of the brand and get them back to the customer once repaired. All these at no cost!
We want to go beyond 10 days replacement/refund guarantee and want to ensure our customers that we are with them till they are using their mobile phone bought from us. We want to bridge the gap between online & offline treatment to the customers.
