By utilising incentive initiatives such as zero-commission marketplace ‘Shopo’ and its ‘Capital assist’ financing programme, Snapdeal aims to entice 100,000 new sellers by March 2016.
“We are right now at 200,000 sellers. It took three years for us to get to 200,000 and my sense is that in the next six months we will add 50,000 to 100,000 sellers,” said Anand Chandrasekaran, Snapdeal’s chief product officer.
Snapdeal has been attempting to create an improved online interface for sellers, to facilitate in reaching its long term goal of gathering 1 million sellers on its platform within three years. The recent acquisition of US-based Reduce Data inc, which produces a display advertising programmable platform, will help Snapdeal build a state of the art environment for sellers.
The recently launched, Shopo is a mobile-only platform which allows sellers to list their products and cuts out the usual long verification process. The sellers can list old or new products and they do not have to pay any commission on sales. Shopo competes with the likes of Quikr and Olx.
Within the first 8 weeks on the Shopo platform:
The financing programme, Capital Assist was launched in March 2014. So far the scheme has reached out to 300 sellers. The sellers get loans between Rs. 100,000 and Rs. 1 crore and so far Rs. 100 crore has been paid out.
Freecharge which is an online recharge and bill payment firm owned by Snapdeal has also launched the ‘freecharge digital wallet‘ in association with Yes Bank. Through this synergy, Snapdeal will be able to provide a similar service to the likes of Paytm, Mobikwik and PayU, in offering discounts, cashback and coupons to attract more digital wallet enthusiasts.
Last year ecommerce companies faced a lot of disgruntled consumers due to the failure to handle the busy customer demand for the high discounted products. Snapdeal is geared up for the festive period this year and are much more prepared to handle the copious sales that are expected.
“Snapdeal’s flash sales platform is today capable of taking 10X more orders compared to a regular day. “For any kind of unplanned scenario there is some stress. Our hope is that all our testing and preparations will come in handy. We have stress tested our platform,” Said Anand Chandrasekaran, Snapdeal’s chief product officer.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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