Internet penetration in India has grown quickly over the previous 5 years, with 600-mn-plus Indians now having information on their telephones. More than 80% of this person base is on social media and content material sharing platforms, however lower than 15% are having fun with the advantages of e-commerce. This is regardless of the efforts of varied direct-to-customer e-commerce platforms to get individuals from tier 2/3/4 cities to transact on-line. “There are two major challenges that have restricted the adoption of e-commerce beyond the big cities – low ticket sizes and a need for assistance & trust,” says Angad Kikla, co-founder, CityMall, a social commerce enterprise that seeks to create India’s largest chain of digital shops on WhatsApp.
CityMall’s mannequin of neighborhood commerce claims to unravel each the aforementioned issues. “Our network of community leaders (CLs) act as demand aggregation points, supply chain partners and the front-face of CityMall’s engagement with its end user base. CLs have good social capital, and the fact they are a part of the same community as the customers allows first-time users to trust the platform,” he remarks.
In his evaluation, the common ticket dimension of purchases in small cities (~Rs 300) is one-third of that in metros and tier-1 cities, making a D2C provide chain unfeasible for these geographies. “Home delivery for such transaction sizes makes the supply chain unsustainable, necessitating demand aggregation to cut logistical costs.” Besides, prospects at such locations are used to buying from neighbourhood kirana shops and native bazaars, and it requires a big quantity of hand-holding, help and trust-building to get them to transact on-line, he provides.
In two and a half years, CityMall has created a community of 25,000+ CLs in 25 city centres throughout Haryana, NCR & UP. It has grown at 30% m-o-m over the previous 18 months, and entered classes like grocery, FMCG, vogue and basic merchandise. “One in three households has purchased from CityMall in cities where we started operations earlier, and in the newer cities we are seeing faster acceptance,” says Kikla.
CityMall has raised a complete of ~$110 m, with its current collection C spherical being led by Norwest Venture Partners. “Our last three rounds have materialised over 15 months, cementing our conviction that community commerce is the way to bring Bharat onto e-commerce,” he says. “We are backed by some of the top global institutional investors including General Catalyst, Citius, Jungle Ventures, Arena Ventures, Elevation, Accel & Waterbridge.”
With the cash it has raised, CityMall plans to broaden to 100 cities and cities over the subsequent 18 months, strengthen its management staff, enter new classes and spend money on superior expertise. “We plan to hire 400 people in the next 15 months.” On the longer term outlook, Kikla says, “We have barely scratched the surface of the e-commerce market in Bharat. The future looks extremely promising as we look to penetrate deeper into north India, and expand our reach to the western belt. Our CL network enables us to service the needs of our end users efficiently. We are on track to become Bharat’s biggest e-commerce platform.”
Source: www.financialexpress.com”