Unicorn Udaan’s Confident Move On Lifestyle Segment

Naina Sood — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 04:35:03 +0000

The unicorn start-up, which is a horizontal marketplace on which manufacturers and wholesalers could sell their products to retailers and small businesses, achieved a volume growth in the lifestyle business in 2020.

A Remarkable Year for Lifestyle

Udaan boasts about 2 lakh businesses under the lifestyle category at present. The segment contributes about 10-12% of Udaan’s overall gross merchandise value (GMV). The lifestyle business – comprising clothing, accessories, and footwear – shipped over 230 million products, catering to over 26 lakh orders in 2020. The segment saw sales of 10 million comfort wear products and slippers across 900 cities during the year. The figures clearly indicate that the segment was, indeed, the company’s confident bet.

Driving Volumes: What made Udaan so confident to enter lifestyle?

The volume growth in the lifestyle segment was driven by various factors, which were also the reason behind the company’s confidence to enter the segment in first place.

Extensive Reach

The company has managed to create an extensive network of brands which drives growth across all the segments. Over 2,500 brands have already partnered Udaan and are leveraging Udaan’s pan-India distribution network to reach out to over three million users with an everyday delivery cycle across 900 cities covering more than 12,000 pin codes.

It presents an attractive proposition for any seller – be it the producer, wholesaler or distributor – as they are able to reach out to a larger set of customers across India. The surprising aspect is that Udaan has found very good traction from Bihar, Jharkhand and the North East followed by Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Karnataka and West Bengal. These states witnessed large transaction volumes in the lifestyle category in 2020.

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Brands are more than willing to come onboard Udaan's platform as the company provides a full-fledged support system, including marketing, sales and finance.

Lifestyle Brands Willingness to Partner: Attractive Propositions

While there has been a strong adoption of the platform by small and medium businesses, even large manufacturers and brands such as Jockey, Arvind, Shoppers Stop, BIBA, Rangriti, Lifestyle, Adidas, Reebok, Puma, Hummel, Relaxo and Aqualite have also partnered with Udaan to leverage its strong distribution network and access newer markets while enjoying cost efficiencies. Brands are more than willing to come onboard the platform as the company provides a full-fledged support system, including marketing, sales and finance. Brands are able to derive cost benefits due to better reach, scale, real-time analytics, expansion to new markets, convenience of product launches and testing of new products in different markets.

Overall Rise in B2B E-Commerce

B2B commerce is growing much faster than B2C commerce. There are close to 5 Crore SME’s that need to secure bulk supplies with a high repeat order frequency. Early metrics from Udaan suggested that the average purchase rate was around 7 times a month with a strong conversion rate of 40% (compared to under 5% for B2C). The ability to create teams fast, set up processes and focus on systems thinking to scale tech helped the company hit the phenomenal vendor growth.

What’s in it for me?

Start-ups are increasingly focusing on the large, and the most unorganised enterprises and small business market. There are countless options to consider when looking to get into the B2B marketplace like analytics for small businesses, content marketing/digital marketing where you can help small and midsize businesses build their own brand and maximise their awareness to their target audience, legal services, venture capital brokerage and others.

The post Unicorn Udaan’s Confident Move On Lifestyle Segment appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

How Did Udaan Become One of The Most Innovative Companies in India?

Smruthi Krishnan — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 00:35:05 +0000

The value of an idea lies in the use of it. And all it takes is one person, one idea and the passion and effort to convert that idea into reality. The start-up culture seeped into India a while back in time and today, it has sown its roots deep into the entrepreneurial status quo giving birth to innovations with every passing day.

Young leaders and entrepreneurs today have the opportunity to explore new innovative avenues providing solutions to problems that vex consumers all across the globe. So how did the B2B start-up become Udaan one of the most innovative companies in India?

What is Udaan?

Udaan is a B2B platform that taps on the behind the scene process of a market which essentially involves back-end work in e-commerce websites like Amazon or Flipkart. For instance, merchants selling the product have to go collect the product and deliver it to a Flipkart storehouse. And with increasing orders, the process can become cumbersome and confusing. To ease the process, Udaan came up with its platform to make trading in terms of logistics and sales more convenient and simpler by connecting small and medium retailers across the country. This very basic idea in a disorganized market resulted in Udaan becoming the disruptor in the industry.

How did Udaan come up with the idea?

Outside the scope of the organised sector, several small retailers across the country were unaware of technology, were duped by middlemen, experienced inefficient prices, lacked access to markets, had poor logistics infrastructure and lacked financial transparency. Here enters Udaan as they try to bring together all participants like a wholesaler, distributor, small and big producers within a single platform enabling B2B transaction through an app on the smartphone.

With the proliferation of the internet, e-commerce growth, digital payments, uniform taxation system via GST and advent of technology like artificial intelligence, Udaan had a positive push in becoming the disruptor in the B2B sector. Understanding the inefficiency in the supply chain, Udaan took advantage of these factors and provided a fair platform to connect all participants in the retail industry chain.

The opportunity in front of Udaan is huge. Unlike fast-moving consumer goods companies that focus on a few products, Udaan has a much wider choice in terms of goods available on the platform. A shop owner can get everything from toffee to a 50 kg rice bag and they get to save a larger proportion of their income than before. Sellers also get to reach a larger scale of consumers. According to Udaan, they transact at least 6000 tonnes daily on an average across India, including perishable goods.

What is next for Udaan?

Even without an internet-dependent population, Udaan gained a lot of popularity in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and also in Northeast India. Udaan has already established itself in the market and aims to build a pan-India online network. The Bengaluru-based firm is valued at $7.5 billion as of 2020, making it the fourth most valued start-up in India after Paytm, OYO and Byju’s. By building expertise in every category, they strive to bring a viable solution for producers as well as consumers.

What’s in it for start-ups ?

A major reason behind Udaan’s success is that in the initial period of operations, they provided logistics at subsidized rates of which provided them with ample market exposure. The founding team of experts and people with knowledge as they worked in Flipkart before. As more ex-Flipkart employees joined, Udaan could improve their productivity and tinker with creativity and innovation.

The company provides a unique solution to retailers and wholesalers via a hassle-free online platform. The success of a start-up often depends on the uniqueness of the product or service it provides and how it changes the lives of consumers and producers. In the start-up world, innovations often carve the path for the success of your company.

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