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What is Disrupting E-Commerce in 2021?

Shalmoli Sarkar — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 02:35:04 +0000

Be it agriculture, health, pharmacy, fruits and vegetables, fashion and jewellery, or white goods, Indian e-commerce is burgeoning across all these consumer categories. Though vaccination drives have commenced, the virus still has time for its eradication. In the wake of the second wave of the pandemic where the infection rate is back to the past year, thus imposing regional lockdowns and curfews it is likely that the Indian shoppers will remain loyal to e-commerce in the future. The e-commerce sector is currently at an inflection point with digital transformation witnessing population from hinterlands embracing technology bringing in first-time consumers thus expanding the customer base. According to a report from EY- IVCA India Trendbook 2021 India’s e-commerce is estimated to reach $99 Billion by 2024 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at 27 per cent with grocery and fashion becoming the tailwinds of its growth. Despite a sluggish economy, pay cuts, and conscious spending, major e-commerce players such as Lenskart, Flipkart and Nykaa are planning to launch IPO ( Initial Public Offering ) thus, unleashing the industry’s potential. In the next few years as more and more, Gen Z will comprise the workforce population unlocking newer demographics and consumer behaviour, more new market segments will emerge that will lead to disruptions in e-commerce ecosystem. Below are some of the disruptions in e-commerce that 2021 will witness.

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According to a report from EY- IVCA India Trendbook 2021 India’s e-commerce is estimated to reach $99 Billion by 2024 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at 27 per cent with grocery and fashion becoming the tailwinds of its growth.

Upcoming Disruptions in E-commerce

Growth of E-pharmacy

The pharmacy market in India is fragmented with its brick and mortar stores in rural and semi-urban areas not having adequate drug inventory. There exists only a handful of retail pharmacies across smaller towns and cities, thus offering poor availability of medicines and other health accessories. The advent of e-pharmacy platforms such as Netmeds, Pharmaeasy, Medlife, etc. is disrupting conventional drug sales in India. According to the RedSeer survey, over 70 per cent of users are willing to use e-pharmacy post-covid-19 due to the positive experience coupled with stronger adoption among low-income households. A major reason for online pharmacy’s growth can be attributed to the paradigm shift in consumer behaviour. Consumers today are conscious about leading a healthy lifestyle and are interested to buy from drugstores that do more than just selling medicines. They require a wellness companion that can offer them holistic wellness solutions to lead a healthy lifestyle. Products such as protein shakes, fitness equipment, nutraceutical foods are more appealing to the health-conscious segment. Hence,here the online pharmacy platform with its efficient supply chain system can aid consumers get access to the hard-to-find medicines in semi-urban and rural areas as well. The omnichannel drug retail will experience a boom with superior quality of service and personalized offerings giving greater consumer control. Anticipating the growth in online drug retail conglomerates and e-commerce giants such as Reliance, Tata, and Amazon are eyeing to own major stakes in the homegrown online medicine platforms.

Whatsapp Payments and Shopping button

As per Statista, Indians form the lion’s share of Whatsapp downloads by 340 million, making it the most preferred messaging app in the nation. The newly introduced features of Whatsapp namely Whatsapp payments and shopping button has made the social messaging app a central platform to thrive the e-commerce businesses. With the launch of the shopping button in its business app, it will allow users to browse through its business catalogue, making it convenient for the users to discover goods or services offered and increasing visibility when clicked on the business profile, eventually increasing sales, that otherwise required to share a PDF of the catalogue. The Whatsapp payments features powered by BHIM UPI allow money to be transferred directly between banks thus, simplifying the payment on the instant messaging app. These two features will prove to be highly beneficial to the local business and small businesses that currently do not have a website due to strained budgets. Many fashion- tech D2C companies such as SockSoho are receiving orders through its Whatsapp account.

Introducing AI tools for a personalised approach

Implementing artificial intelligence (AI) tools in e-commerce is not new. However, with changing consumers these days prefer to purchase from brands that offer them to celebrate uniqueness and the liberty to express themselves vividly. Hence, e-commerce companies will be adopting AI tools for a more personalised approach that will help in enhanced customer engagement, track shopping habits, and chatbots for improved customer service eventually generating better demand and conversions.

New E-commerce: Social e-commerce

The introduction of new selling features on Facebook and Instagram such as Facebook marketplaces, Facebook shops and Instagram selling features is opening new avenues for small and medium businesses. According to a report by Bain & Company, it states that small sellers constitute 85 percent of all social commerce players. Social commerce allows small businesses to acquire customers at lower costs as compared to e-commerce giants that spend enormous budgets on marketing for acquiring. Sellers through social commerce gain a deeper understanding of customer behaviour for consumers in rural India. Apart from leveraging social media platforms, various social commerce platforms such as Meesho, Saral Jeevan Sahelis are adopting an assisted commerce platform that will give rural customers access to a plethora of rural-friendly products and services.

For the startups to enter the e-commerce

Investors are now interested to fund in business models that are not following the suit of e-commerce aggregators such as Amazon and Flipkart. Instead, they are looking for unique business models that can effectively solve the problems of the customer and remain resilient to the ever-changing consumer behaviour, thus bringing disruptions in e-commerce.

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How Did Meesho Spur New Models of Innovation?

Aakash Sharma — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 02:35:03 +0000

Meesho is a Bangalore-based social commerce platform founded in December 2015 by graduates of IIT Delhi, Vidit Atre and Sanjeev Barnwal. It allows small businesses and individuals to open their online stores through WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Meesho, which actually means ‘Meri Shop‘ (my shop), equips possible entrepreneurs with a practical digital shop. The company offers distribution access to 20,000 manufacturers through its platform. Meesho was one of three Indian companies selected for the Y Combinator in 2016. It was also part of the first batch of the Google Launchpad – Solve for India programme. In June 2019, it became the first Indian start-up to be invested in by Facebook.

Meesho Innovation Spree – Turning People into Digital Shopkeepers

Meesho has over 2 million people who it has successfully transformed into digital shopkeepers. The app allows users to set up online stores with over 21,000 small and medium-sized vendors offering new product categories such as clothing, jewellery, home kitchens, etc. Users can market these products on the network through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Meesho receives a 10% to 20% sales commission on transactions.

Many ‘providers’ that are part of the Indian domestic household have a knack for business. With Meesho, they are granted the financial freedom to conduct business with the Meesho app without leaving home. These entrepreneurs do not usually have the capital to buy raw materials and indulge in simple brick and mortar trading centres. So, Meesho merchants don’t have to carry inventory; suppliers drop-ship items after they’re ordered.

Resellers can send payment links directly through social media, including WhatsApp. A relatively new sector is opening up in India with the massive leap in the country’s 4G infrastructure over the years. There are currently 2 million resellers and 700 cities in India and Indonesia on Meesho’s channels.

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New start-ups can tap the opportunity in connecting local and small businesses with large audiences using WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms.

Meesho’s Innovation and Fervent Funding Liftoff

Raising money for a business is not easy. And the time it took for Meesho to raise Series A funds and the resulting confusion was challenging. Meesho received its first institutional loan of $3 million from SAIF Partners in 2017. This was followed by a funding round of $10 million from Sequoia Capital. Slowly, Facebook and Naspers also got on board.

Many investors did not believe in Meesho’s business model and saw it as new. But one thing that worked for the social trading platform was the user pull it gained. Although the start-up was unable to raise funds, it continued to snowball. Investors who didn’t consider investing initially suddenly revamped their decision as they saw the numbers grow. The idea of selling WhatsApp around 2016 and 2017 was very new, and no one had tried it yet.

Innovating Community Commerce

While the venture capital industry initially did not quite figure out the workings of offline community commerce, it saw a great opportunity in Meesho’s innovative models. On top of that, Meesho users have shown great gratitude for changing their business and lives effectively in so many ways, further encouraging the base of innovation.

And with this right time, funding and innovation of the digital marketplace, Meesho spurred new models and platforms for businesses across the spectrum to run smoothly and reach broad audiences.

What can start-ups learn from Meesho?

Meesho’s business model can clearly be a standard for aspiring entrepreneurs aiming to start out in the community commerce segment. While many aspects of the industry have now come to the forefront, there aren’t many big players yet who have occupied the space.

New start-ups can tap the opportunity in connecting local and small businesses with large audiences using WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. These platforms have dedicated services that encourage small businesses to grow using their means. A start-up can assist the millions of shopkeepers, kirana stores, bakeries, departmental stores, floweries etc. across India in realising their potential of mass reach.

With the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan at its peak and the prime minister’s call to go “Vocal for Local”, it can be a great opportunity for new entrepreneurs to connect the MSMEs with their vast markets.

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Evolution Of Telegram: How It Grew Going Back 2013

Naina Sood — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 02:35:03 +0000

Telegram topped the list of the most downloaded non-gaming apps globally in January 2021. The messaging platform saw over 63 million installs during the month, about four times its downloads during the same period last year. Let’s dig into the history of this fastest-growing product and its evolution over the years:

The launch of Telegram

Telegram was started in 2013 after a contest for Android developers. The alpha version of the app was initially launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android in October 2013 with secret chats and self-destruct timers. After completely documenting the Application Programming Interface (API), the code of the app became an open source as the app touched 1,00,000 daily active users during the first year of its launch. In 2014, the company made the app available for desktop and allowed documents to be sent and received on the app besides introducing voice messages.

The company continuously worked on making the app supportive of iOS and Android products. Meanwhile, the privacy and secret chat settings were upgraded with account self-destruction.

Third party integration, mass reach

The company rigorously spent the first two years in fixing the basics of the app and garnered around 60 million active users. The year 2015 brought in the advancements as the company launched channels to broadcast messages to masses, which gave the product worldwide reach, and a platform for third-party developers to create bots which helped add features to Telegram like payments, moderate groups, emails and much more.

Supergroups, game play and goodies

A lot of developments were brought in to add fun features, especially GIFs, hashtags, sticker panels, emojis to pep up the app and keep the group chats rolling. It created ‘Supergroups’ to tackle its competitor WhatApp’s group limit by increasing the maximum number of users for its group chats to 1,000. By 2016, the group power reached 5,000 members besides updating channels and bots which were integrated with services like YouTube and Foursquare for easy video and location sharing. After integrating the bots, the company notched up by introducing the gaming platform by the end of 2016.

Voice calls, interactive map, secret chat

The company rang in 2017 with voice calls built on end-to-end encryption along with a dedicated video hosting platform called Telescope. The groups levelled up by June 2017, increasing the maximum members to 10,000. It also added a self-destruct timer for photos and videos to give users the option to send disappearing media in private chats. This ‘secret chat’ was the company’s main selling point besides the bigger group capacity. Telegram also expanded its localisation by launching the Translations Platform for users.

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With over 400 million monthly active users in April 2020, Telegram added video calling with end-to-end encryption like Signal and WhatsApp, which Zoom does not have yet.

The dark mode on Telegram

By 2018, Telegram introduced two types of dark modes on its mobile app — night and tinted night, a feature which its competitors are yet to device. The company focused on making its privacy settings more flexible besides creating location-based public chats by 2019. It also introduced ‘Polls 2.0’ which allows users to conduct various types of polls within chat groups and channels.

With over 400 million monthly active users in April 2020, Telegram added video calling with end-to-end encryption like Signal and WhatsApp, which Zoom does not have yet. The group voice chat feature came out by December.

Targeting to build a diverse platform, the app ventured into becoming an online learning tool. The Quiz Polls, a unique offering, was introduced in January 2020 for educational tests. In January 2021, Telegram allowed users to import messages and media from other apps like WhatsApp, Line and KakaoTalk as millions flocked to its platform.

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Telegram: The Most Downloaded Messaging App In January 2021

Naina Sood — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 12:35:02 +0000

With over 63 million installs, Telegram became the most downloaded non-gaming app in the world in January 2021, overtaking Tiktok. According to app analytics firm Sensor Towers, India recorded the largest number of installs at 24%, followed by Indonesia at 10%. The evolution and success of this cloud-based instant messaging app is quite a story.

What led to the surge?

This comes amidst the Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp’s privacy row. The popularity of Telegram increased dramatically after WhatsApp started sending notifications to over 400 million users in January 2021 asking them to either accept its new policy or see their accounts removed from 8 February, 2021. More than the ultimatum it was the contents of the privacy policy that made users uncomfortable. Facing a huge backlash in the country, WhatsApp deferred its new data privacy policy by three months and said that no one will lose his or her account from 8 February, 2021 for not accepting the updated terms of service. However, the damage was already done with people jumping ship to Telegram and its like Signal.

Telegram’s journey

Telegram was started in 2013 by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the creators of VKontakte known as VK, the largest social networking site of Russia. Nikolai created the MTProto protocol that is the basis for the messenger, while Pavel provided financial support and infrastructure through his Digital Fortress fund, with partner Axel Neff joining as a second co-founder.

The battle

Even though WhatsApp has more than 1.3 billion users worldwide, the features offered by Telegram like secret chat, self-destructing messages, encrypted backup ensure more secured chats. Apart from security features, Telegram is also ahead of WhatsApp in terms of other features like Dark Mode and larger group capacity. Every month Telegram added a new feature that seems to really understand what people want or need. Besides all this, it seems to be the only real competition to the giant owned by Facebook. Positioning of the product played the most vital role in Telegram’s success. In the beginning of 2010, there was a lot of news about leaks of personal data, spying on users and abusive use of users’ personal data. The company took advantage of the situation with the request for secured online services and branded the product, hence creating a unique identity.

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According to app analytics firm Sensor Towers, India recorded the largest number of installs at 24%, followed by Indonesia at 10%.

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WhatsApp Has India as its Largest Market

Aakash Sharma — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 12:30:05 +0000

In April 2020, Facebook declared its plans of investing $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, giving Facebook its largest minority stake. The contract with Jio allowed integration of WhatsApp with JioMart to connect people with businesses smoothly and efficiently.

In November 2020, Facebook-owned WhatsApp India received NPCI’s (National Payments Corporation of India) permission to connect with the multi-bank model’s UPI network. It also began a ‘Shopping’ button and a ‘Carts’ feature on its WhatsApp Business application to facilitate e-commerce transactions.

With 2 billion users worldwide, it has India as its largest market i.e., over 400 million users. It is only reasonable for the company to extend its user base by rolling out products and services designed for the Indian market.

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WhatsApp India received NPCI's (National Payments Corporation of India) permission to connect with the multi-bank model's UPI network.

What to expect from WhatsApp’s India plans in 2021?

It has launched several products this year, and Indian regulators have granted permission for many of its new services.

Digital Lending and Insurance

The company aims to partner with financial institutions to expand banking assistance in rural areas. It also plans to introduce products and services to provide financial aid such as insurance, microcredit and pension. WhatsApp Pay has, till now, grouped up with five Indian banks- State Bank of India, Axis Bank, Jio Payments Bank, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.

WhatsApp-JioMart Deal: A Lift in Indian e-Commerce

WhatsApp users can ping ‘Hi’ to a phone number for JioMart, thereafter, a virtual assistant would initiate a chat with the store. Now, the user can trace orders’ status and get an item or refund-related queries.

WhatsApp Business to Boost in India

In July 2020, the company claimed that there were 50 million Business accounts globally, of which 15 million were from India. The company declared its intentions of equipping stores with QR codes. Business owners could put forth the QR codes on their business’ storefront or the product slip and packaging supply.

Instead of saving a business’ number and then beginning a chat, users could scan the QR code to open a WhatsApp chat with the industry. Last year, the company started the catalogue feature for WhatsApp Business, allowing businesses to show their products.

WhatsApp plans to increase its partnerships with business solution providers and charge users of business accounts if they decide to use such high-level cooperation.

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