[ad_1]
Flipkart’s social commerce platform Shopsy which was launched in July last year is expecting to touch 100 million users this year, as it eyes to become the largest such platform in the country. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce, and more consumers are shopping online at a higher frequency on Flipkart’s Shopsy platform.
“We are very well on target to achieve that number (100 million) by the end of the year,” said Prakash Sikaria, senior vice president, growth and monetization, Flipkart, in an interview. “Shopsy has scaled up about four times through the JFM (January-February-March) quarter. By the end of the year, we expect Shopsy to contribute a significant share of Flipkart’s unit growth.”
Shopsy is competing with other social commerce firms and startups such as SoftBank-backed Meesho, DealShare, BulBul, GlowRoad, Mall91, and simsim (which was acquired by Google’s video streaming platform YouTube)
Flipkart has more than 350 million registered users in the country. Today 70 per cent of Flipkart’s customers come from tier-2 and 3 cities. With Shopsy, Flipkart aims to scale this to 90 per cent.
“About half of our customers on the Shopsy platform are new to e-commerce,” said Sikaria. “From here on we aim to maintain our healthy 30-40 per cent growth month on month for the rest of the year.”
Flipkart said the top categories that are growing rapidly on the Shopsy platform include furniture at 9x, mobile at 6x, lifestyle at 2.5x, home at 2.5x, and books and general merchandise (BGM) at 2.5x between the January-March period this year. The top regions where the platform has seen the most growth in units sold in that period include Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
In December 2021, Shopsy forayed into the grocery category with a focus on community buying e-grocery purchases offering users a flat 5 per cent commission margin. Grocery on Shopsy spans over 6,000 products across 230 categories – ranging from staples, FMCG, and other dry grocery servicing over 5,800 pin codes across 700 cities
“In the next three months, we are making significant investments there (grocery),” said Sikaria.
Social commerce is expected to be about a $70 billion market opportunity in the next few years, according to analysts. They said digitally connected Indians spend an average of three hours per day online, of which more than two hours are consumed by messaging, social media networking, and watching videos. Millions of small retailers are finding innovative ways to sell directly to consumers through a variety of social formats, ranging from conversational commerce on chat platforms to video-led commerce to a vibrant social reseller community.
“One of the (innovations) that we’re working on is that how do we bring these guys who are already doing some pieces of video commerce on the Shopsy platform,” said Sikaria.
Flipkart is working on bringing in more gamified experiences on Shopsy to engage with the customers. It is bringing innovative ad experiences both for brands and sellers.
Shopsy recently topped the charts with over 30 million downloads. This milestone came soon after Shopsy rolled out its latest campaign ‘It happens only on Shopsy’ which successfully highlighted its value proposition as a hyper value platform with unbelievably low prices. The campaign featured Sara Ali Khan in two ad films. Maximum downloads were from tier 3+ cities, specifically from the northern regions of India with 65 per cent users hailing from tier 3 regions. The platform also recorded a 2X jump among female users immediately after the launch. Additionally, within merely five months, Shopsy has seen a spike of nearly 3X in its monthly active users.
Shopsy has over 250,000 sellers on the platform who provide 150 million products across over 250 categories. The platform propels e-commerce growth in communities where users face challenges around trust and navigation when it comes to shopping online. It does this by leveraging common messaging and social media to provide an assisted online shopping experience for users.
Shopsy offers two kinds of buying. One is where consumers are using the platform for buying products for themselves and the second is entrepreneurial, where ‘community buying’ takes place. With Shopsy, Flipkart aims to enable over 25 million online entrepreneurs by 2023 as they reap the benefits of digital commerce.
Shopsy’s chief rival is internet commerce firm Meesho. In line with its vision to become a single shopping destination for the next billion users in India, Meesho recently said it is integrating its grocery business within the core application by the first week of May, 2022.
The company has also rebranded Farmiso to Meesho Superstore, representing its continued focus to fulfill consumer demand for daily essentials in tier 2 markets. Meesho Superstore currently provides 500 products across categories like fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, groceries, home care and packaged food. The integration will now provide the company’s over 100 million Meesho users access to over 87 million active product listings across 36 categories on a single platform.
[ad_2]
Source link