The other day in Bangalore, Vivek Jain and Mahadev Gupta of StrApp Business Solutions, went to meet a potential customer who is into textiles – sarees, to be specific. This company was located on the 2nd floor of a building, in a crowded market area in Bangalore – and is a very traditionally run business. They were keen to go online and wanted to know if StrApp could handle their logistics and other e-commerce related issues. “That was enough indication for us to get into this,” says a beaming Jain who finished a Masters in Computer Applications from Bharatidasan University in Trichy along with his college friend Gupta, who has had stints with ad agencies.

Thus StrApp, a company built on the premise that a saree vendor in Patna can sell his goods online, decided to explore this segment with retailers. To be precise, StrApp would take up all the matters involved in e-commerce (for a saree vendor) - from customer support, logistics and payment, using its technology platform.

StrApp’s journey has been similar to some of the companies in India. Starting out as web development companies, having a workforce that can write software codes, develop websites and other stuff, StrApp has moved on to a large extent from writing codes on PhP or Java to designing e-commerce portals, handle logistics, undertake online marketing and product shoots.

The target customer is the usual – small and medium enterprises in India. A lot of SMEs in India want to go online, but that requires investment in terms of manpower and a lot of time and commitment. “That's where we step in, and work with customers to develop the online presence, bring traffic to the site, handle the logistics, provide customer support – whether on phone or by email – and provide weekly reports on sales, products and analyse web traffic.

All this has resulted in the company bagging clients in the e-commerce space. StrApp manages the complete web part of retailers like Lifestyle and Max Fashions and runs portals of fulloftoys.com and pinnacleworks.com.

Why StrApp?

There's a very clear trend of people buying online and the number of businesses that have an online presence are very few. India like other countries is seeing a large number of SMBs and according to some estimates; these businesses may contribute $700 billion to the GDP.

Also, research findings indicate that number of Indian SMEs conducing international business activities is expected to rise to 56 per cent from 2013. The increase is driven by the domestic SMEs, 24 per cent of which plan to go international by 2013 and having an online presence. Some other estimates peg total Indian SMBs at around 35 million.

In this context, StrApp sees a large market. “In a few years, ecommerce would become the primary mode for people to buy and if a business or a brand isn’t selling online, it’s a massive opportunity lost,” says Jain. The e-commerce segment got another push with Amazon, the world’s largest e-retailer announcing its India foray in the first week of this month.

Challenges

There are companies (small, medium and large) there are considering going online - but they would need to invest in manpower, managing the business and hence there's a delay in them taking a decision to go online - and that's where StrApp comes in. “We would handle it all for them. They would need to focus on the product management and be part of the marketing strategy - the rest would be handled by us,” says Jain.

Despite the online euphoria, on-the-ground merchants are sceptical, especially since there seems to be a plethora of companies with questionable business models. Businesses are a bit sceptical of the ecommerce segment because the way a few online businesses operate seems unsustainable at the moment. “Businesses are currently playing the watch game and delaying their decision on going online but a good product with very good customer service will still find takers,” according to Jain.

So, what is different for StrApp? It is in that non-glamorous and often overlooked but crucial aspect in e-commerce customer support. "Our focus is on exceptional customer service - we get our inspiration from Zappos and the reason why a lot of them abandon shopping carts is because they would want to be very sure about the product they are buying and in case they have the slightest doubt, they wouldn’t buy unless someone is able to help them with their queries," says Jain.

The company is trying to close that gap – by making it easier for customers to be able enter their phone number and in less than a minute, the customer support team would call them to clarify on their questions, which would ensure the customer is sure what they are buying and in the process, increasing the conversions. Offerings like making websites accessible on mobile devices could result in more people opting to buy.

Funding

The company has dug into its internal sources but now to increase scale is looking to go for some kind of venture funding. For the future, the company plans to have partners across different cities and tap into businesses all over the country. In a business that has low entry barrier, highly unfragmented business which is very price sensitive, combined with tech investments constantly rising, StrApp has its work cut out.

venkatesh.ganesh@thehindu.co.in

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