allAyurveda.com Mulls International Expansion!
allAyurveda.com Mulls International Expansion!

How did allAyurveda.com gets started? Also present your views on current organic product retailing in India?

allAyurveda.com started in 2000 after witnessing a dotcom boom in India. In the initial phase, it eretailed range of Baidyanath products but over the years it progressed to also providing rich content on Ayurveda to educate consumers about Ayurveda and the usage of ayurvedic products in daily lives. The content provided on the website is verified and vetted by qualified Ayurveda doctors and experts and is instrumental in educating consumers and encouraging them to embrace Ayurveda in their daily lifestyle.

In early 2016, without any marketing, allAyurveda.com started witnessing an exponential growth in traffic which was a clear indication of rising awareness and embracing of Ayurveda by people. This was an opportunity for us to transform allAyurveda.com into a comprehensive and holistic ecommerce ecosystem for all natural and Ayurveda requirements. We expanded the offering beyond Baidyanath products to include more brands to provide width and depth of categories and products.

Today, allAyurveda.com is a comprehensive and holistic ecommerce ecosystem for natural living requirements. Presently, there are three main offerings of allAyurveda.com. These are:

  1. Marketplace: A wide range of Ayurvedic and natural living health products ranging from Preventive Medicine, Curative Medicine, Personal Care, Food Items, Fitness Supplements, Beauty Products amongst others. We presently have over 35 brands and over 3000 SKUs.
  2. Doctor Consultation: One key differentiator of allAyurveda.com is that we provide doctor consultation online. Sometimes, consumers prefer taking an opinion of an expert before making a purchase; this feature helps us to resolve such consumer queries.
  3. Rich Authoritative Content: We want consumers to embrace Ayurveda in their daily lifestyle and to do so we have been constantly educating consumers on the various uses and benefits of Ayurveda through rich content. This content is created keeping in mind the modern lifestyles of today’s urban consumer and thus it becomes more relatable. Doctors and experts vet this content, which makes it authentic.

Organic product retailing in India is still in its infancy and we can expect more innovation in manufacturing and distribution in the future. Also, while there is some awareness in metro cities about organic products, the adoption is still very minuscule compared to Western countries. We see a lot of potential in demand for organic products in Tier 2 and 3 cities in the coming years.

Kindly shed light on your current distribution in online and offline space? What would your strategies to scale up the distribution?

allAyurveda.com is a managed market place wherein we offer our customers the benefit of choice; brands that term themselves as natural, organic, herbal and natural are all offered under one roof. We have a wide distribution network and our products are made accessible across almost all pin codes. Our monthly web traffic is over 300,000 users and we have been seeing a growth of 30% month on month. SEO as a channel for organic growth has worked well for us and apart from that, we have also been running various social media campaigns to create awareness about the brand.

Our mixed model helps us provide convenience and options to our users. Currently, shipment models include warehousing and drop shipping but we will be looking at other options to in the future such as consignment models as it will benefit both - the vendors and the users. Vendor’s shipping models do not restrict them and users benefit because they get everything under one roof.

What were the major challenges while setting up allAyurveda.com? And, how did you overcome them?

allAyurveda.com launched in 2000 which gave us first mover advantage. Apart from that, with the push from the AYUSH ministry to promote Ayurveda in the past few of years as well as the rising awareness and adoption of natural and organic lifestyle by the people led to an increase in demand for verified content and products. Our biggest challenge so far has been streamlining of segments.

Who do you see as your major competition?

The uniqueness of allAyurveda.com lies in its DNA of it being an ecosystem rather than just an ecommerce marketplace. Besides, being an Ayurvedic and natural living products marketplace, we educate consumers on natural wellbeing through rich authoritative content and easy access to doctor consultation by facilitating it online. Apart from that, we see other manufacturing companies in Ayurveda as our potential partners. We aim to provide equal opportunity to lesser known wellness brands that have good quality products but lack the national reach and empower our customers by on-boarding their suggested brands.

Kindly shed light on best performing categories? Also mention your average bill size? What are the plans to extend the exiting categories?

In 2018, we intend to expand and diversify our categories to cover the everyday requirements of our users.Last year, digestive health, skin and hair care and sexual wellness were some of our best performing categories. But, this year, we will push some of our latest categories like Beauty and Fitness. To offer diverse and quality options to our users, we will simplify the product discovery process by limiting each category with curated list of brand.

Have you raised any sort of equity fund so far or plan to?

allAyurveda.comreceived an initial capital from Baidyanath of $250,000 which along with our cashflow will cover our operations till 2018-end apart from allowing us to launch our US operations.

We intend to raise Series A funding towards the second half of 2018 that will help us scale up our technology as well as operations across other markets.

At last, kindly mention your growth plans?

allAyurveda.com aims to launch its US operations towards March end and sometime in the middle of this year, we aim to launch our Community portal with Facebook bot followed by product discovery AI bot at the end of 2018. Also, depending on our experience, learning and progress in US operations, we may choose to expand to other markets like UK, Middle East or Russia.

 

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