Shopclues injecting better services to its merchants
Shopclues injecting better services to its merchants

In the pursuit to bolster its merchant services, online marketplace Shopclues has hired Arun Goel as the Vice President, Products. With more than 1,25,000 merchants onboard, Shopclues aims at building and managing services to scale their business faster and more effectively.

Talking about the same with Retailer Media, Arun Goel, the newly appointed VP of Products shared his vision towards the growth of the company. He also spoke about making Shopclues a one-stop service provider for its merchants.

Talk to us about the role and responsibilities you look forward to handle at Shopclues.com?

It is my objective to make Shopclues the one-stop merchant service provider to help them increase their sales. Shopclues is building cloud based merchant services. Merchants can subscribe to these services to help them to grow their business. These services include marketing, multi-channel advertising, online services, chat services, financial services and fulfillment among others.

I’ll also be building products and services for hyperlocal business. Shopclues was taking business national, however now we are helping it go local as well. The other services and products for merchants will include logistics, digital coupons and location aware solutions that will help buyers and sellers to discover and conduct eCommerce with each other easily.The buzz word these days is to convert offline to online. However, the fact is that certain offline behaviour can not be changed. Some customers prefer the ‘touch-and-feel’ shopping behaviour which can only be achieved at the point of purchase. I’m building innovative solutions to provide customers this offline capability while also giving them the capability to switch to online once their trust with the merchant is established. This is achievable with the eCommerce operating system we have in-house.

What is your take on journey of Shopclues in eCommerce segment?

India is expected to be the fastest growing eCommerce market over the next few years. Indian eCommerce market is forecasted to grow 15X to 2.5 per cent of GDP, or US$300bn, by 2030 driven – by hyper growth in affordable smartphones, improving infrastructure, and a propensity to transact online. These numbers bode well for our organic growth.Unlike other marketplaces, Shopclues is focused on unstructured categories and hence is uniquely positioned to benefit even more with growth in eCommerce.

What challenges you see lying ahead in terms of the market trends and opportunities?

Within challenges lie opportunities. We have unique challenges due to the nature of our business of catering to unstructured catalog like quality checks and counterfeit. We are coming up with innovative solutions of overcoming those. We are also building beautiful and easy-to-use products to help our merchants grow and to give our customers a state-of-the-art buying experience.

Many of our 2,50,000 merchants have offline stores that we are digitising to help them to sell. One of the mantras is to connect buyers and seller in the ‘neighborhood’. This improves delivery SLAs and also gives us the opportunity to convert offline customers to online. We are building products to help us do precisely this.

Shopclues is still running negative in terms of cash flow. How soon do you expect go to positive and what will be your role in making this possible?

We expect to be contribution margin positive by the start of the holiday season next year and soon thereafter to be cash flow positive. Neighbourhood marketplace should also help reduce our logistics costs and improve margins. Also, with the growing seller base of 2,50,000 merchants, we have an advantage to provide point-of-sale services that should increase non-transactional revenue and improve margins.

Under your supervision, where do you see the company 3-5 years down the line?

We expect to totally own the mass market in India with a focus on becoming the retailer of choice for tier 2 and 3 cities. We also want to be the platform of choice for SMEs to take their business online. We currently have 250k merchants on the platform and by 2020 we expect to have 5mnn merchants onboard.

How different do you think things will turn out to be for you at Shopclues?

I’d founded three start-ups in the United States before. One was a telecom services company with PSTN and VOIP network, another was a hedge fund and a third was a hyperlocal grocery solution. We have a talented and capable team to build next-generation products and I’m confident we are well placed to take Shopclues to the next level.

We hear a lot of complaints and negative feedbacks about Shopclues products. Being a VP - Products what amendments do you think are necessary to make shopper’s experience better?

E-commerce in India is relatively a newer industry. As with any new industry, there comes challenges and learning along the way for all participants in the marketplace (customer, merchants and the marketplace itself). There are infrastructure and regulation challenges to name a few. We are learning and learning quickly. While the industry still has a long way to go before it matures, the winners will be the companies that can constantly innovate to bring about a change.

We have recently launched chat between buyers and sellers and we have seen some very positive feedback of the feature. We have other products in the pipeline to give our users an experience that they can relish.

These days retail businesses are taking the Omni-channel way to compete with their peer groups. Do you have similar plans for Shopclues?

Definitely! While we have seen growth in mCommerce outstrip desktop demand lately, we feel that all channels have an important place and character in eCommerce and hence no channel would become irrelevant in foreseeable future.

Some of the products we built like social sharing are relevant for mobile alone while others like chat services are relevant for Omni-channel platforms. I can’t emphasise the importance of going hyperlocal more. E-commere in the neighborhood, where buyers and sellers are at a stone’s throw away, provides transparency about product quality and improves buying experience.

Many eCommerce players have come up with their private labelled products. Do you have any plans for the same?

Shopclues is the FIRST marketplace in India. We have never been an inventory-based model so we will never have private labels, however, there are many merchants who create and launch exclusive brands for the Shopclues customer. We have introduced never-seen-before price points in the Indian market. Example: iron for Rs150, Flat panel TV for Rs 5000, and many more of such amazing products that are available only on our platform.

Where do you see the future of eCommerce and how do you plan to cope with the changing dynamics of the market in the coming years?

Like I mentioned, the eCommerce industry is expected to grow 15X in next 15 years. We will continue to innovate to provide best products and services to all the players in this value chain. We have a nimble team to adjust to changing dynamics and will continue to execute on our strategy.                                                                                                         

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