Idea is to bring millions of small and medium enterprises online by making it easy for them to list and sell.
E-commerce major Snapdeal.com on Wednesday re-launched a new mobile-based platform, Shopo, targeting micro, small and medium enterprises and making it possible for even individuals to sell their products - be it used goods or a spare movie ticket or a handcraft item. Snapdeal had acquired Shopo in 2013.
Snapdeal will forego its commission on any sale on Shopo, allowing individuals and businesses to register using just their mobile numbers apart from enabling them with an instant chat option in order to negotiate the price and decide on the logistics of the trade, replicating the offline model.
The idea is to bring millions of small and medium enterprises online by making it easy for them to list and sell, said Kunal Bahl, co-founder and chief executive of Snapdeal.
The idea behind the re-launch of Shopo, which is similar to the Alibaba model, could be to catch up with the likes of Paytm (which has a zero commission model) and Quikr (used goods marketplace for individuals) among other popular ecommerce models.
Bahl said currently less than 0.1 per cent of the small businesses in India have online presence and the rigorous listing process followed by e-commerce marketplaces sometime exclude a large percentage of such enterprises.
Around 450,000 sellers have been turned away from Snapdeal over the last three years for various reasons, including the long drawn process of registering online, he said, adding perhaps Shopo could provide them with the right platform to retail their goods.
Snapdeal has set a target of bringing one million such enterprises online in the next one year. The beta version of the platform already has 30,000 listings by 4,500 shop owners.
As far as the revenue model is concerned, the company said it is right now not considering making any money but could look at advertising or premium listings as a mode of revenue in the future.
However, Snapdeal will not provide any assistance in terms of payment or delivery. The buyers and sellers will have to choose a mutually convenient mode of transaction as well as delivery.
The company also said since the sellers will be rated on their products and behavior, the onus will be on them to take care of the user experience. But, Snapdeal does not have clear answers on how it would deal with consumer grievances in case of a fraud, cheating or sale of sub-standard products.
It said the company would put in place checks and balances to make sure that illegal products such as drugs are not sold on their platform, without detailing what these measures will be.
“Honestly, we don’t have all the answers right now,” said Bahl. Since the company already has the infrastructure for logistics and payment, it can extend those features to Shopo as well depending on customer feedback. “We have just launched it as a platform for friction-free commerce,” added Bahl.
