Dhamaal.com, New Marketplace Launched by CCAvenue & Infibeam

Avenues, the parent company that owns CCAvenue, one of India’s most used payment gateways has launched its own marketplace called Dhamaal.com. This initiative is a collaboration between Avenues and Infibeam.

Dhamaal is being positioned not so much a modern marketplace like Flipkart, Snapdeal etc. but more like a marketing platform for online sellers. Apart from tie-up with banks (explained below), we don't see how it is any different from a typical marketplace. The primary value-add that any marketplace provides to it's sellers is the fact that they get customers to the site. It does not matter how that marketing happens.

Dhamaal currently lists products belonging to the apparel, online recharge, home entertainment, cameras, gifts, mobiles and computers and kids wear.

Tie-up with banks, access to millions of customers

CCAvenues being a major payment gateway service which has been operating since many years now, has very good professional relationships with various Indian banks. Dhamaal has been talking about how they have tie-ups with these banks to market the products on the site to millions of customers that the banks already own. Time will tell if these tie-ups actually pay-off.

Merchant fees:

Dhamaal has not released any information about how much they would charge merchants to list their product on the marketplace. We believe that they should keep the merchant fees competitive, like Amazon, to entice sellers to join this platform. There is no question of charging a listing fee, but the final percentage of sale that they keep should also be kept competitive.

Initial Traction

CCAvenue claims that they have already KYC’d around 15,000 merchants across India. This seller base will be the first market they hit. This is a big number and even if they can sign-up the top 10% of these merchants, they will have a very good mix of products on the site.

Interested sellers could explore the opportunities that Dhamaal provides and grow their reach and sales. However, you will have to manage your logistics and stock keeping processes which will probably be a cumbersome task compared to options like eBay India’s PowerShip and Snapdeal’s SafeShip.

What will Dhamaal need to do get sellers interested

• Make sure sales happen and grow. Sellers may sign-up, but loose interest if the sales are not good consistently.

• Provide fast and consistent remittance mechanism to the sellers. Policies need to be clear and technology needs to be in place to manage this.

• Take responsibility of logistics from the suppliers. The success of PowerShip type programs is a proof that sellers prefer them.

• Make the back-end panel as efficient as possible with bulk operations like uploads, downloads and editing. It is tough for the sellers to sell on so many platforms and any help there is good.

Website | Dhamaal.com