Heena Ansari brims with joy as she talks about her new business. The 29-year-old housewife, who lives in the bustling Jamia Nagar area of Old Delhi, set up a shop for the products she handcrafts 10 months ago.
“Within just five days of starting my shop, I received an order for 50 handcrafted jute bags,” she recalls. Ansari, who also helps her husband run his small-time garment business and is raising two kids, is now doing business like a pro.
Her shop, named TripleSss, sells crochet and wool-made handcrafted products like jewellery, bags and accessories for women. TripleSss runs on online platform Shopo, earning Ansari profits of ₹500-1,000 a day.
Shopo, the app-only mobile C2C marketplace majority owned by Snapdeal, features over 1.5 lakh sellers like TripleSss, from around 800 cities.
Snapdeal has invested $100 million in the zero commission platform, which it acquired in 2013 and re-launched in July last year. Unlike other e-commerce marketplaces, sellers on Shopo do not have to pay the platform any commission.
“When we started out we didn’t want any friction points that are present in existing online marketplaces,” says Sandeep Komaravelly, Senior Vice-President of Shopo.
“Sometimes, the commission acts as a hindrance, thus, we decided to be a zero commission marketplace so there are no complexities and all those who want to set up their shop can do so in no time. We help sellers set up shop and offer them lot of customisation.”
So how does Shopo make money? “Monetisation will happen primarily through ad sales, which we will introduce over a period of time,” says Komaravelly. “We believe if we could generate enough traction on the platform — accumulate a lot of sellers, who in turn will get the buyers — it will bring opportunities for us to monetise through ads.”
Value additions“We will also provide value-added services to our sellers which will be payable and that can also be a large source of monetisation.” Also, some sellers do not have the required logistics and payments infrastructure. “For those sellers we will provide integration of Freecharge wallet, which will help them in processing online payments and transactions,” adds Komaravelly.
While Shopo will provide such assistance, the negotiation, discussions and ownership will completely lie with the sellers.
“That's the fundamental difference between us and other marketplaces like Snapdeal,” he points out. Unlike Snapdeal, there is no catalogue, no paperwork required to set up shop on Shopo. The small-time sellers who populate the platform can define their own shop, customise and merchandise it. They can chat with potential buyers and sell their ware.
The app currently has a catalogue of more than 4 million products. According to Komaravelly, the product categories are mostly impulse-driven, non-branded or unique — things that you may otherwise find hard to get online.