BENGALURU: Online
retailer Flipkart, which took quite a few knocks during its big discounted sale
day last October, has started preparing for another such event at the end of
this year that will be "many times bigger" and is working to improve its
ability to anticipate demand, deliver goods faster and eliminate sub-standard
and fake products.
"The sale emerged
as a great learning experience for us and we have already started to implement
processes in order to scale up our tech capabilities" said Sachin Bansal,
CEO and co-founder of Flipkart.
Almost 1.5 million
shoppers bought goods such as phones, clothes and accessories worth over $100
million from Flipkart on the Big Billion Day sale on October 6. However,
several buyers looking for bargains found that the products had been sold out
or were greeted by glitches on the website. The founders later apologised to
their customers and said they were not adequately prepared for the sheer scale
of the event.
Flipkart plans to work
closely with sellers on its site to improve its ability to predict demand and
invest more in automating its supply chain to speed up delivery, Bansal said.
The e-tailer aims to double the strength of its technology team in the next 12-18
months. It currently employs about 1,000 people in its engineering division.
"Big Billion Day
this year will be many times bigger. We also want to see our mobile platform
play a larger role in serving customers during this years' sale,"
Bansal told ET in an interview. Mobile commerce is growing twice as fast as
desktop for Flipkart and currently accounts for over half of the company's
sales. "The pace at which this medium is catching up with and even
surpassing desktops is faster than what we have seen in the US or China, where
the concept of mobile commerce has been around for longer," he said.
Bansal, fresh off a
company-wide strategy meeting, said that in 2015 it will also focus on data
analytics to offer personalised experiences across its mobile apps, marketplace
platform and supply-chain network.
Flipkart has a large
amount of customer data that can be used to improve sales. During the Big
Billion Day sale, it generated almost 500 TB of commerce data. "We
primarily use data to predict customer trends based on region, gender, wish
list etc., to drive an enriching shopping experience," said Bansal.
The online retailer
wants to get to 1 lakh sellers on its online marketplace by the end of the
year, according to Ankit Nagori, SVP - Marketplace at Flipkart. It has tied up
with small and medium enterprises, government bodies and co-operative societies
to increase the number of sellers on the site.
"We aim to have
at least 10,000 sellers become millionaires this year through the sales
generated on our platform," said Nagori. WS Retail, a company Flipkart hived
off earlier, is still one of the largest sellers on the marketplace but others
have been catching up, he said, declining to disclose its share of overall
sales.
The company will get
stricter with merchants selling sub-standard products on the site, said Nagori.
Marketplaces like Flipkart face difficulty controlling the quality of items
listed by third-party sellers. Some consumer companies have alleged that
counterfeits of their products are sold online.
Sellers blacklisted by
other ecommerce portals won't qualify to sell on Flipkart. Currently, there are
over 4,000 sellers on the site. The company will ensure that sellers have a
registered business and can only offer original products with warranties.
"We also have
on-ground teams carrying out quality checks at seller facilities from time to
time along with mystery shoppers who are constantly monitoring sellers for
product quality, delivery timelines and customer friendly return/replacement
policies, “ he said.
The e-commerce company
is looking to raise another round of funds at a valuation of $15 billion (Rs
95,000 crore) and to sell goods worth $5 billion by March 2016. It is now
valued at $11.25 billion and is set to clock $3 billion in gross sales by the
end of the financial year in March.
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