Dhiraj Kumar, a sales manager for a chemical company in Mumbai, spends the one hour he commutes to office in Lower Parel every day glued to his phone.
\n
\nUnlike his fellow commuters, the 34-year-old isn’t glued to WhatsApp or talking to family; instead, he browses for furniture for his under-construction flat, checks out the latest deals on Flipkart and considers his lunch options either on Zomato, Foodpanda or the mobile-only startup TinyOwl.
\n
His iPhone is the centre of his internet universe; he claims not to have been on an ecommerce<\/a> website in at least six months and not ordered off a traditional website in a year.
\n
\nStartups across India’s $15 billion ecommerce sector, in a desperate battle for customers, have decisively turned their attention to people such as Kumar who have ditched their laptops and desktops and use their smartphones to go deal-hunting.
\n
\nAs the number of broadband connections plateaued and mobile data connections grow almost 100% annually, consumers are voting with their feet. They are opting to download apps of their favourite ecommerce ventures and use these slickly designed products rather than browserbased variants.
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/p>

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\n\t
\n\tThe companies, on their part, are following their customers’ lead. They are halting or slowing investments in traditional ecommerce and focussing their energies on upgrading their products in the mobile commerce, or mcommerce, sphere. “We are completely aligned with this mobile opportunity,” says Ashish Goel, co-founder of Urban Ladder, an online furniture and home furnishings venture.<\/p>\n“We expect that by December, 70-75% of all our transactions will be on our mobile app.” Its investors, including former Tata chairman Ratan Tata, are all supporting this push, Goel adds, even as the firm nears a third round of funding led by Sequoia Capital to fuel its mcommerce dreams.
\n
\n

\n\t <\/span><\/div> Urban Ladder isn’t the only firm jumping aboard the mobile bandwagon. In Mumbai, Pranay Chulet, the 41-year old founder of Quikr<\/a>, an online classifieds site backed by Tiger Global, Omidyar Networks and Matrix Ventures, thinks that this medium is reshaping the way entrepreneurs like him size up the market. “We have stopped thinking of desktops and browsers,” he says.
\n
\n“The mobile phone helps me fulfill the promise of brand Quikr much faster, since we have responses between both buyers and sellers and transactions in a few minutes.”
\n
\nWith over 30 million users a month and gross merchandise value (GMV) of over $5 billion cumulatively, Chulet has to be at the top of his game to keep both sides coming back for more. “The amount of time users spend on Quikr has increased six or seven fold after we launched a mobile app,” he adds.
\n
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\n\tChain Reaction<\/strong><\/p>\nIt isn’t only the smaller ventures that are seeing the virtue of going all-in with their mobile investments. Large ecommerce players such as Flipkart and Snapdeal, with years of investments in building a traditional web presence, are making firm bets on recasting themselves as mcommerce firms.
\n
\nFor example Myntra, owned by Flipkart, announced in February that 90% of its traffic came from mobile devices. In six months to a year, its website may disappear altogether. “We get 70% of our business from mobile,” says Prasad Kompalli, head, ecommerce platform, Myntra. “This platform helps us deliver our value proposition to the customer better, with more personalised offerings.”
\n
\nMyntra’s swift move towards being a mobile-only entity may offer some pointers to its parent Flipkart, which started off as an online book vendor in 2007 and is today an ecommerce giant generating some $8 billion in GMV from some 20 million products across 70-plus categories.
\n
\nThe firm’s co-founder and chief executive Sachin Bansal said that mobile would be a key focus area for the firm, which has landed nearly $2 billion in funding from some 50 assorted investors.
\n
\n“In the last 12 months, the mobile business share has gone from single digit to over 50% of its orders and is expected to reach 65-70%,” according to Bansal.
\n
\nAs users gravitate towards the mobile, Flipkart executives are keen to sharpen its technology to allow consumers to place orders on patchy networks in the hinterland. “We want to build a strong presence in the mobile wallet space and our investment in ngpay [a mobile payment gateway company] is a strong step in this direction,” Bansal adds (see Mobile Wallets...).
\n
\nFlipkart’s largest Indian rival Snapdeal too is placing mcommerce at the centre of its strategy, as it closes in on the acquisition of Freecharge, an online provider of recharge services for a variety of products, for a whopping Rs 2,800 crore. “For every new strategic initiative and every new marketing campaign, we think mobile first,” says Ankit Khanna, vice-president, product management, at Snapdeal.
\n
\n“We get around 70% of our business from mobile. We want to deepen the culture of mobile-first and move quickly towards increasing our share from this platform.” To maximise its sales from mobile devices, Snapdeal has doubled its engineering headcount in this segment in the past year to 700.
\n
\nIn many ways, the mobile environment offers these companies, with a legacy of starting up in the old ecommerce market, a chance for a clean slate. While both platforms offer consumers the choice to connect to the internet, what they do after is quite different.
\n
\nWith a mobile handset, for example, these ecommerce firms can offer more customised solutions, leverage other functionalities on the device (social media, camera, pinch to zoom features, address book) to build an app that looks palpably different from its seemingly distant browser-based cousin.
\n
\nWhat’s more, targeting and communicating with customers is more focussed and direct. As these internet commerce companies launch mega sales to bring in customers, mobile is a key platform to keep them buying — companies get 50-70% of sales from them and say this could increase by 10-15% as mobile data coverage and speeds improve.
\n
\nWith a mobile device rapidly emerging as the default source of internet access across India — especially across its untapped hinterland — these startups may be only taking their first steps in this journey. Despite these attractions, most companies have had to work hard on their mobile device initiatives.
\n
\nFor starters, they need to reset their mindset, moving away from prioritising web-based metrics such as page views, to focussing on the speed and ease of transactions on the mobile. Then, there’s the headache of ensuring the app is installed and used repeatedly by consumers.
\n
\n

\n\t <\/span><\/div>\nFinally, perhaps the biggest stumbling block has been one of payments. While the browser allows you to handle a tedious five- to seven-step payment transaction, the mobile phone is much harder to use. Everyone supported the development of a mobile wallet, but as Flipkart’s misadventure with PayZippy showed (it was forced to shut the payment gateway after customers didn’t bite), there’s much work to be done on this front.
\n
“As companies reach a GMV of $10 billion, having so much cash sloshing around the system will make them very inefficient,” says Vijay Shekhar Sharma, chief executive and founder of Paytm<\/a>, a mobile wallet firm.
\n
\nDespite these hurdles, startups are backing themselves to make the most of an explosively growing market. According to data from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the number of active mobile connections was around 944 million in 2014 and is expected to cross 1 billion this year. In 2014 alone, some 70 million mobile data connections were added, with around 180 million of these subscribers cumulatively.
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According to some estimates, it costs just 1.3% of median income to pay for an entry-level data plan — the lowest among emerging economies. Coupled with crashing handset rates (a smartphone<\/a> is now available for under Rs 5,000), mobile internet looks set to make a major impact. Some 80 million smartphones were shipped in 2014, as per multiple estimates.<\/p>\nCompanies have quickly altered their strategy to tap this market. For example, Chulet of Quikr says its Quikr Nxt, a mobile messaging tool, has been a smash hit with customers who are chary of giving out their numbers and other personal details.
\n
\n“We get over 20 million responses every month,” he explains. “This method of communication gives more control to users and over 50% of communication has moved from phone and email to more targetted chats. The mobile has changed the game and transformed Quikr.”
\n
\nA Fresh Purpose<\/strong>
\n
\nHis is not only the only venture to find fresh purpose with mobile devices. Over at Urban Ladder, these devices are helping co-founder Goel reimagine the future of his business. “We are helping customers imagine spaces and allowing them to virtually configure their own room before making a purchase,” he says. “We want to leverage the popularity of Pinterest and Instagram and features such as touch and pinch to zoom on devices to build the best tech team in the country.”
\n
\nIn the white-hot online food market, Foodpanda is hinging its entire strategy on the mobile. Managing director Rohit Chadda says the firm relaunched its app six months ago to incorporate some features on menu display, payments and repeat orders from specific joints. “We get a 20% higher basket size on the mobile compared to the web,” he says. “We already get half our business from the mobile and believe this will go to 70% quickly.”
\n
\nBacked by $110 million from its investor Rocket Internet, Foodpanda is set to expand its payment options soon and is working on having a mobile wallet for customers. The roadblock to hiring the best talent and building the best team of mobile app developers may come in the form of Amazon, the proverbial 800-pound gorilla of this market.
\n
\n“We are investing in creating a world-class mobile platform,” says Akshay Sahi, head, customer experience, Amazon India. Mobile customers can shop for the full selection of products available on the website. Using these apps, customers can now scan a barcode or type a product name to check availability and prices for that item.
\n
\n“Shopping on the app offers additional benefits to the customer… they can shop on-the-go, get up to the minute order-tracking information and receive timely notifications for new launches and exclusives,” he adds.
\n
\nAbout half of Amazon’s traffic comes from mobile devices. It is investing big bucks in India — it announced in July 2014 a $2-billion investment in operations — and is expected to put aside a significant share to boost mobile initiatives. An “Appiness Day” hosted in November generated four times the traffic compared to a regular day. For good reason too. “While the shopping activity on PC peaks at certain times of the day, we see that shopping on mobile increases through the day,” says Sahi.
\n
\n

\n\t <\/span><\/div>\nMobile-only Ventures<\/strong>
\n
\nIf the elephant is beginning to dance, the flyweights aren’t ducking for cover. New startups are standing up to be counted. For example, in Mumbai, TinyOwl, a food ordering startup, hasn’t even bothered with a web presence. Instead, the company proudly calls itself a mobile-only (as opposed to a mobile-first) venture. “Many people have used the internet for the first time on smartphones,\" says Harshvardhan Mandad, a cofounder of the startup. “The future is mobile and we want to build a company for it.”
\n
\nWhen the firm was founded in 2013, it started small, focussing only on restaurants that deliver in Mumbai (it has since signed up with over 4,000), before casting its sights further. Now, TinyOwl is on a roll. The firm had quickly raised two rounds of venture capital financing from the likes of Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture and in February it inked a deal for its third tranche of funding. Investors seem to like the company’s mobile-only model.
\n
\n“We want to expand to four or five cities such as Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad,” says Mandad. “When we went live in Mumbai, we estimated that we had around 60% of the restaurants with delivery services… we want to follow a similar model in these cities too.”
\n
\nIn January this year, Paytm’s Sharma, via flagship company One97 Communications, raised $635 million from Chinese internet giant Alibaba. The move was validation of a business that was built the other way around compared to the competition.
\n
\nPaytm has become perhaps the most recognised prepaid mobile wallet in the business. Even as other companies consider their mobile wallet options, Paytm has forged full steam ahead. The number of wallets increased from over 13 million to over 26 million from September last year to now and is expected to race to 100 million by the end of 2015. “We have bet our business on mcommerce,” says Shekhar.
\n
\nThe bets seem to be paying off — the firm has racked up a billion dollars in GMV on its year-old mobile marketplace, with 18,000 merchants already signed up and live and another 20,000 in the queue. Shekhar is also building out his backbone — his mobile wallet — to allow peer-to-peer money transfers with zero fees and no intermediary such as a bank between his customers.
\n
\n“Unlike traditional ecommerce players, 90% of our customers are on prepaid mobile wallets,” says Shekhar. “Our business is therefore more efficient because we don’t waste time and money chasing after cash on delivery payments.” Mobile devices, it appears, have become central to the strategy of India’s internet commerce startups. With 4G around the corner and mobile data subscriber numbers exploding, the opportunity to mine India’s massive market may be just beginning.
\n
\n
\nMobile Wallets, anyone?<\/strong>
\n
\nCash on delivery (CoD) accounts for around three-quarters of all orders delivered by ecommerce companies, as wary consumers shy away from using their cards. CoD is an inefficient process for these firms (each pick up costs Rs 30-50) and is replete with returns (of ordered products).
\n
\n
\n
\n
\nAs India’s mcommerce market gets set for take-off, a prolonged process could deter users from ordering off their phones. The success of firms such as Paytm, with its mobile wallet (prepaid orders account for 90% of its business), may point to an easier path to success. Prepaid mobile wallet is a prepaid payment option for customers to pay for products and services online with a couple of taps on their device. No credit card details or PINs need to be entered, making it a faster payment method.
\n
\nAlready, global giants such as Google, Amazon and Facebook are investing heavily in mobile wallets, and more Indian firms could follow suit. “We will have around 100 million mobile wallets by the end of the year,” says Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm.
\n
\nOther startups chasing the mcommerce market too say that a mobile wallet is a must. “We are considering several options to give our customers this option,” says Ankit Khanna of Snapdeal. Large rivals such as Flipkart and smaller specialist upstarts such as Urban Ladder and Quikr, as well as mobile-only ventures such as TinyOwl and Lybrate too say they are in various stages of piecing together a wallet to simplify payments.\n\n<\/body>","next_sibling":[{"msid":46648611,"title":"BSNL introdcues NGN technology","entity_type":"ARTICLE","link":"\/news\/industry\/bsnl-introdcues-ngn-technology\/46648611","category_name":null,"category_name_seo":"industry"}],"related_content":[],"msid":46648668,"entity_type":"ARTICLE","title":"How mobile phone is fuelling transactions at ecommerce ventures like Paytm, Quikr","synopsis":"Roughly half the online transactions on some of India\u2019s most exciting ecommerce startups are via mobile phones. That proportion can only increase.","titleseo":"industry\/how-mobile-phone-is-fuelling-transactions-at-ecommerce-ventures-like-paytm-quikr","status":"ACTIVE","authors":[{"author_name":"Rahul Sachitanand","author_link":"\/author\/6230\/rahul-sachitanand","author_image":"https:\/\/etimg.etb2bimg.com\/authorthumb\/6230.cms?width=100&height=100&hostid=268","author_additional":{"thumbsize":false,"msid":6230,"author_name":"Rahul Sachitanand","author_seo_name":"rahul-sachitanand","designation":"Editor","agency":false}}],"Alttitle":{"minfo":""},"artag":"ET Bureau","artdate":"2015-03-22 11:58:50","lastupd":"2015-03-22 12:20:49","breadcrumbTags":["industry","Smartphone","Quikr","Ecommerce","Insights","PayTM","mobile transaction"],"secinfo":{"seolocation":"industry\/how-mobile-phone-is-fuelling-transactions-at-ecommerce-ventures-like-paytm-quikr"}}" data-authors="[" rahul sachitanand"]" data-category-name="Industry" data-category_id="18" data-date="2015-03-22" data-index="article_1">

手机是如何推动交易在电子商务企业像Paytm Quikr吗

大约一半的在线交易在印度一些最令人兴奋的电子商务创业公司通过移动电话。这一比例只会增加。

拉胡尔Sachitanand
  • 2015年3月22日更新是将近12点

Dhiraj Kumar化工公司的销售经理在孟买,花费他一小时通勤办公室降低帕雷尔每天粘在他的电话。

与他的通勤者不同的是,这位34岁的不粘WhatsApp或与家庭;相反,他浏览家具逐渐平坦,Flipkart公司查看最新交易,认为他的午餐选择Zomato, Foodpanda或只用手机启动TinyOwl。

他的iPhone是宇宙的中心网络;他声称没有一个电子商务网站在至少6个月而不是下令在一年内从一个传统的网站。

创业公司在印度150亿美元的电子商务领域,为客户在一个绝望的战斗中,果断地将注意力转向Kumar等人已经抛弃了他们的笔记本电脑和台式电脑和使用智能手机去deal-hunting。

随着宽带连接的数量趋于稳定和移动数据连接每年增长近100%,消费者用脚投票。他们选择他们最喜爱的电子商务企业的应用程序下载和使用这些灵巧地设计产品,而不是browserbased变体。




的公司,在他们之后他们客户的领导。他们停止或放缓投资传统电子商务和精力关注升级他们的产品在移动商务,或mcommerce球体。“我们是完全符合这个移动的机会,”阿施施戈埃尔说,城市的创始人之一阶梯,网上家具和家居用品企业。

“我们预计,到12月,70 - 75%的交易将在我们的移动应用”。它的投资者,包括前塔塔集团董事长拉丹•塔塔(Ratan Tata)都支持这种推动,戈埃尔补充道,尽管该公司接近领导的第三轮融资,红杉资本来推动其mcommerce梦想。

城市梯子并不是唯一公司跟风上移动。在孟买,Pranay Chulet, 41岁的创始人Quikr在线分类广告网站支持的老虎全球,Omidyar网络和矩阵企业,认为这一媒介重塑像他这样的创业型企业家的市场规模。“我们已经停止了思考的桌面和浏览器,”他说。

“手机帮我实现品牌Quikr更快的承诺,因为我们有买卖双方之间的反应和交易在几分钟。”

每月超过3000万个用户和商品价值总额(GMV)累计超过50亿美元,Chulet必须是他的比赛保持双方的顶部回来。“用户的时间花在Quikr增加了六七折我们推出了手机应用程序之后,”他补充说。


连锁反应

不仅仅是规模较小的企业,看到全力以赴的美德与手机的投资。Flipkart公司等大型电子商务公司和Snapdeal,年投资建立一个传统的web的存在,使得公司押注重铸自己mcommerce公司。

例如Myntra, Flipkart公司旗下在2月宣布90%的流量来自移动设备。在6个月到1年,其网站上可能完全消失。“我们得到70%的业务来自移动,”普拉萨德说Kompalli,头,电子商务平台,Myntra。“这个平台帮助我们提供我们的客户价值主张更好,有更多个性化的产品。”

Myntra迅速走向做一个手机单一实体可能会带来一些指针其母Flipkart公司于2007年开始作为一个在线图书供应商,今天电子商务巨头产生约80亿美元的GMV从大约2000万产品在70多个类别。

公司的联合创始人和首席执行官萨钦邦萨尔说,移动公司将是一个重点领域,已落近20亿美元约50各类投资者的资金。

“在过去的12个月,移动业务份额已经从单一的数字超过50%的订单,预计将达到65 - 70%,”邦萨尔。

当用户倾向于移动,Flipkart公司高管热衷于加强其技术允许消费者下订单在内地的网络。“我们希望建立一个强大的业务在移动钱包空间和投资在ngpay(移动支付网关公司)是一个强大的步骤,这个方向,”邦萨尔(见手机钱包…)补充道。

Flipkart公司最大的印度竞争对手Snapdeal也将mcommerce其战略的中心,因为它关闭的收购Freecharge,在线为各种产品提供充电服务,高达2800卢比。“对于每一个新的战略计划和每一个新的营销活动,我们认为手机第一,“Ankit卡纳说,副总统Snapdeal产品管理。

“我们从移动获得大约70%的我们的业务。我们要深化移动先行”的文化,迅速从这个平台对增加我们份额。“从移动设备销售额最大化,Snapdeal工程人数翻了一番,这段过去一年至700年。

在许多方面,移动环境提供了这些公司,遗留的旧电子商务市场的启动,一个干净的石板的机会。虽然这两种平台都提供消费者选择连接到互联网,他们追求的是完全不同的。

手机,例如,这些电子商务公司可以提供更多的定制解决方案,利用其他功能在设备上(社交媒体,相机,捏放大特性,通讯录)构建一个应用程序看起来明显不同于其看似遥远的基于浏览器的表弟。

更重要的是,目标和沟通与客户更专注和直接。随着这些互联网商务公司推出大型销售带来客户,移动是一个关键的平台让他们购买,公司从他们那里得到50 - 70%的销售额,说这可能会增加10 - 15%,移动数据覆盖和速度提高。

与移动设备的迅速崛起为默认来源互联网接入在印度,特别是在其尚未开发的腹地——这些创业公司可能只是他们在这个旅程的第一步。尽管有这些景点,大多数企业不得不努力工作在他们的移动设备计划。

首先,他们需要重置他们的心态,远离优先考虑基于web页面浏览量等指标,来关注交易的速度和方便移动。然后,确保应用程序安装的头痛和重复使用的消费者。

最后,也许最大的障碍是支付。而浏览器允许您处理一个乏味的五至七付款交易,手机是更难使用。每个人都支持手机钱包的发展,但与PayZippy Flipkart公司的灾难显示(它被迫关闭后的支付网关客户不咬人),在这方面有很多工作要做。

“GMV公司达到100亿美元,拥有如此多的现金流动系统将使他们非常低效,“Vijay Shekhar Sharma说,首席执行官和创始人Paytm手机钱包公司。

尽管存在这些障碍,创业支持自己充分利用爆炸增长的市场。数据显示印度电信管理局(火车),活跃的移动连接的数量大约是9.44亿年的2014,预计今年的10亿。仅在2014年,大约7000万添加了移动数据连接,累计约1.8亿个用户。


据一些人估计,成本只有1.3%的收入来支付一个入门级的数据计划,新兴经济体中最低的。加上手机崩溃率(a智能手机现在可以根据Rs 5000),移动互联网将产生重大影响。8000万智能手机在2014年被运送,根据多个估计。

公司已经迅速改变他们的策略开发这个市场。例如,Chulet Quikr称其Quikr Nxt的移动通讯工具,已经成为轰动与客户仔细的给他们的号码和其他个人信息。

“我们得到每月2000万多的反应,”他解释说。”这种沟通方法为用户提供了更多的控制和超过50%的通信已经从电话和电子邮件更合适的聊天。手机已经改变了游戏和转换Quikr。”

一个新鲜的目的

他不仅是唯一的风险与移动设备找到新鲜的目的。在城市的阶梯,这些设备正在帮助创始人高尔重新定义他的商业的未来。“我们帮助客户想象空间和允许他们几乎配置自己的房间在购买之前,”他说。“我们希望利用Pinterest和Instagram的流行和特性,比如触摸和捏拉设备上建立最好的技术团队的国家。”

在白热化的在线食品市场,Foodpanda是要整个移动策略。董事总经理罗希特Chadda说六个月前该公司重新推出它的应用将一些功能菜单显示,支付和重复特定关节的命令。“我们让一个身形苗条的篮子高出20%相比,在移动网络,”他说。“我们已经得到一半我们的业务从移动迅速,相信这将70%。”

支持的1.1亿美元投资者火箭网,Foodpanda很快将扩大其付款方式,正在为客户手机钱包。障碍招聘最优秀的人才和建设最好的球队的移动应用程序开发人员可能会在亚马逊的形式,这个市场的众所周知的800磅重的大猩猩。

“我们正投资于创造一个世界级的移动平台,“阿卡什Sahi说,印度客户体验,亚马逊。移动客户可以购买在网站上产品的全部选择。使用这些应用程序,客户现在可以扫描条码或键入产品名称检查项目的可用性和价格。

“购物应用程序向客户提供额外的好处…他们可以商店忙个不停的,得到最新的订单跟踪信息和接收及时通知新发射和独家新闻,”他补充道。

大约一半的亚马逊的流量是来自于移动设备。投资很多钱在印度——2014年7月宣布投资20亿美元在操作和预计放下手机份额有显著的提升计划。一个“幸福的一天”主持11月生成的四倍交通相比,普通的一天。有充分的理由。“虽然电脑购物活动高峰在一天中的某些时候,我们看到,购物在移动通过增加一天,“Sahi说。

只用手机企业

如果大象是开始跳舞,封面的轻量级选手并不回避。新创业公司都站起来。TinyOwl,例如,在孟买食物顺序启动,还没有烦恼与web的存在。相反,该公司骄傲地称自己只用手机(相对于“移动先行”)合资企业。“许多人使用互联网首次在智能手机上,“说Harshvardhan Mandad,创业公司的创始人之一。“未来是移动,我们想建立一个公司。”

当公司成立于2013年,它开始很小,只关注餐馆提供在孟买(它已经签署了超过4000),铸造目光前进一步。现在,TinyOwl一卷。公司很快两轮风险资本融资从红杉资本和关系风险和公司签署了一份协议,为其2月第三笔融资。投资者似乎像公司的手机单一模型。

“我们希望扩大到四个或五个城市,如德里,浦那(班加罗尔和海德拉巴,“Mandad说。“当我们住在孟买,我们估计,大约60%的餐厅与交付服务…我们要遵循类似的模式在这些城市。”

今年1月,Paytm沙玛,通过旗舰公司One97通信,从中国互联网巨头阿里巴巴筹集了6.35亿美元。此举是验证的业务,建成反过来相比竞争。

Paytm也许已经成为最认可的预付费手机钱包业务。即使其他公司考虑他们的移动钱包的选择,Paytm伪造全速前进。钱包的数量从1300万增加到超过2600万个从去年9月到现在,预计1亿到2015年底。“我们赌我们的业务在mcommerce Shekhar说。

赌注似乎取得了成功,公司已积累了十亿美元的GMV岁的移动市场,18000商人已经签署和生活和另一个20000年的队列。Shekhar也是构建他的支柱——他的手机钱包——允许对等资金转移与零费用和客户之间没有中介机构如银行。

“与传统电子商务的球员,我们90%的客户都在预付费手机钱包,“Shekhar说。因此“我们的业务更高效,因为我们不要浪费时间和金钱追逐现金货到付款。“移动设备,似乎已经成为印度的战略核心的互联网商业创业。与4 g在拐角处和移动数据用户数量的激增,有机会我印度的大规模市场可能刚刚开始。


移动钱包,有人知道吗?

货到付款(CoD)占所有订单的大约四分之三由电子商务公司,由于担心消费者回避使用其信用卡。鳕鱼是一个低效的过程为这些公司(每个接成本Rs 30 - 50)和充满了回报(订购产品)。




随着印度mcommerce市场起飞,旷日持久的过程可能阻止用户订购手机。Paytm等公司的成功,手机钱包(预付订单占其业务的90%),可能指向一个更容易走向成功。预付费手机钱包是一个预付的付款选择客户在线支付产品和服务的龙头装置。没有信用卡信息或针需要进入,使它更快的支付方式。

等全球巨头谷歌,亚马逊和脸谱大力投资移动钱包,和更多的印度公司可能会效仿。“我们将有大约1亿手机钱包到今年年底,“Vijay Shekhar Sharma说,Paytm的创始人。

其他创业公司追逐mcommerce市场说手机钱包是必须的。“我们正在考虑多种选择给我们的客户这个选项,“Snapdeal Ankit Khanna说。Flipkart公司等大型竞争对手和小城市梯子和Quikr等专业暴发户,以及手机单一企业如TinyOwl Lybrate说他们在拼凑一个钱包的不同阶段来简化支付。
  • 发布于2015年3月22日11:58点坚持
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Dhiraj Kumar, a sales manager for a chemical company in Mumbai, spends the one hour he commutes to office in Lower Parel every day glued to his phone.
\n
\nUnlike his fellow commuters, the 34-year-old isn’t glued to WhatsApp or talking to family; instead, he browses for furniture for his under-construction flat, checks out the latest deals on Flipkart and considers his lunch options either on Zomato, Foodpanda or the mobile-only startup TinyOwl.
\n
His iPhone is the centre of his internet universe; he claims not to have been on an ecommerce<\/a> website in at least six months and not ordered off a traditional website in a year.
\n
\nStartups across India’s $15 billion ecommerce sector, in a desperate battle for customers, have decisively turned their attention to people such as Kumar who have ditched their laptops and desktops and use their smartphones to go deal-hunting.
\n
\nAs the number of broadband connections plateaued and mobile data connections grow almost 100% annually, consumers are voting with their feet. They are opting to download apps of their favourite ecommerce ventures and use these slickly designed products rather than browserbased variants.
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\n\t
\n\tThe companies, on their part, are following their customers’ lead. They are halting or slowing investments in traditional ecommerce and focussing their energies on upgrading their products in the mobile commerce, or mcommerce, sphere. “We are completely aligned with this mobile opportunity,” says Ashish Goel, co-founder of Urban Ladder, an online furniture and home furnishings venture.<\/p>\n“We expect that by December, 70-75% of all our transactions will be on our mobile app.” Its investors, including former Tata chairman Ratan Tata, are all supporting this push, Goel adds, even as the firm nears a third round of funding led by Sequoia Capital to fuel its mcommerce dreams.
\n
\n

\n\t <\/span><\/div> Urban Ladder isn’t the only firm jumping aboard the mobile bandwagon. In Mumbai, Pranay Chulet, the 41-year old founder of Quikr<\/a>, an online classifieds site backed by Tiger Global, Omidyar Networks and Matrix Ventures, thinks that this medium is reshaping the way entrepreneurs like him size up the market. “We have stopped thinking of desktops and browsers,” he says.
\n
\n“The mobile phone helps me fulfill the promise of brand Quikr much faster, since we have responses between both buyers and sellers and transactions in a few minutes.”
\n
\nWith over 30 million users a month and gross merchandise value (GMV) of over $5 billion cumulatively, Chulet has to be at the top of his game to keep both sides coming back for more. “The amount of time users spend on Quikr has increased six or seven fold after we launched a mobile app,” he adds.
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\n\tChain Reaction<\/strong><\/p>\nIt isn’t only the smaller ventures that are seeing the virtue of going all-in with their mobile investments. Large ecommerce players such as Flipkart and Snapdeal, with years of investments in building a traditional web presence, are making firm bets on recasting themselves as mcommerce firms.
\n
\nFor example Myntra, owned by Flipkart, announced in February that 90% of its traffic came from mobile devices. In six months to a year, its website may disappear altogether. “We get 70% of our business from mobile,” says Prasad Kompalli, head, ecommerce platform, Myntra. “This platform helps us deliver our value proposition to the customer better, with more personalised offerings.”
\n
\nMyntra’s swift move towards being a mobile-only entity may offer some pointers to its parent Flipkart, which started off as an online book vendor in 2007 and is today an ecommerce giant generating some $8 billion in GMV from some 20 million products across 70-plus categories.
\n
\nThe firm’s co-founder and chief executive Sachin Bansal said that mobile would be a key focus area for the firm, which has landed nearly $2 billion in funding from some 50 assorted investors.
\n
\n“In the last 12 months, the mobile business share has gone from single digit to over 50% of its orders and is expected to reach 65-70%,” according to Bansal.
\n
\nAs users gravitate towards the mobile, Flipkart executives are keen to sharpen its technology to allow consumers to place orders on patchy networks in the hinterland. “We want to build a strong presence in the mobile wallet space and our investment in ngpay [a mobile payment gateway company] is a strong step in this direction,” Bansal adds (see Mobile Wallets...).
\n
\nFlipkart’s largest Indian rival Snapdeal too is placing mcommerce at the centre of its strategy, as it closes in on the acquisition of Freecharge, an online provider of recharge services for a variety of products, for a whopping Rs 2,800 crore. “For every new strategic initiative and every new marketing campaign, we think mobile first,” says Ankit Khanna, vice-president, product management, at Snapdeal.
\n
\n“We get around 70% of our business from mobile. We want to deepen the culture of mobile-first and move quickly towards increasing our share from this platform.” To maximise its sales from mobile devices, Snapdeal has doubled its engineering headcount in this segment in the past year to 700.
\n
\nIn many ways, the mobile environment offers these companies, with a legacy of starting up in the old ecommerce market, a chance for a clean slate. While both platforms offer consumers the choice to connect to the internet, what they do after is quite different.
\n
\nWith a mobile handset, for example, these ecommerce firms can offer more customised solutions, leverage other functionalities on the device (social media, camera, pinch to zoom features, address book) to build an app that looks palpably different from its seemingly distant browser-based cousin.
\n
\nWhat’s more, targeting and communicating with customers is more focussed and direct. As these internet commerce companies launch mega sales to bring in customers, mobile is a key platform to keep them buying — companies get 50-70% of sales from them and say this could increase by 10-15% as mobile data coverage and speeds improve.
\n
\nWith a mobile device rapidly emerging as the default source of internet access across India — especially across its untapped hinterland — these startups may be only taking their first steps in this journey. Despite these attractions, most companies have had to work hard on their mobile device initiatives.
\n
\nFor starters, they need to reset their mindset, moving away from prioritising web-based metrics such as page views, to focussing on the speed and ease of transactions on the mobile. Then, there’s the headache of ensuring the app is installed and used repeatedly by consumers.
\n
\n

\n\t <\/span><\/div>\nFinally, perhaps the biggest stumbling block has been one of payments. While the browser allows you to handle a tedious five- to seven-step payment transaction, the mobile phone is much harder to use. Everyone supported the development of a mobile wallet, but as Flipkart’s misadventure with PayZippy showed (it was forced to shut the payment gateway after customers didn’t bite), there’s much work to be done on this front.
\n
“As companies reach a GMV of $10 billion, having so much cash sloshing around the system will make them very inefficient,” says Vijay Shekhar Sharma, chief executive and founder of Paytm<\/a>, a mobile wallet firm.
\n
\nDespite these hurdles, startups are backing themselves to make the most of an explosively growing market. According to data from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the number of active mobile connections was around 944 million in 2014 and is expected to cross 1 billion this year. In 2014 alone, some 70 million mobile data connections were added, with around 180 million of these subscribers cumulatively.
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According to some estimates, it costs just 1.3% of median income to pay for an entry-level data plan — the lowest among emerging economies. Coupled with crashing handset rates (a smartphone<\/a> is now available for under Rs 5,000), mobile internet looks set to make a major impact. Some 80 million smartphones were shipped in 2014, as per multiple estimates.<\/p>\nCompanies have quickly altered their strategy to tap this market. For example, Chulet of Quikr says its Quikr Nxt, a mobile messaging tool, has been a smash hit with customers who are chary of giving out their numbers and other personal details.
\n
\n“We get over 20 million responses every month,” he explains. “This method of communication gives more control to users and over 50% of communication has moved from phone and email to more targetted chats. The mobile has changed the game and transformed Quikr.”
\n
\nA Fresh Purpose<\/strong>
\n
\nHis is not only the only venture to find fresh purpose with mobile devices. Over at Urban Ladder, these devices are helping co-founder Goel reimagine the future of his business. “We are helping customers imagine spaces and allowing them to virtually configure their own room before making a purchase,” he says. “We want to leverage the popularity of Pinterest and Instagram and features such as touch and pinch to zoom on devices to build the best tech team in the country.”
\n
\nIn the white-hot online food market, Foodpanda is hinging its entire strategy on the mobile. Managing director Rohit Chadda says the firm relaunched its app six months ago to incorporate some features on menu display, payments and repeat orders from specific joints. “We get a 20% higher basket size on the mobile compared to the web,” he says. “We already get half our business from the mobile and believe this will go to 70% quickly.”
\n
\nBacked by $110 million from its investor Rocket Internet, Foodpanda is set to expand its payment options soon and is working on having a mobile wallet for customers. The roadblock to hiring the best talent and building the best team of mobile app developers may come in the form of Amazon, the proverbial 800-pound gorilla of this market.
\n
\n“We are investing in creating a world-class mobile platform,” says Akshay Sahi, head, customer experience, Amazon India. Mobile customers can shop for the full selection of products available on the website. Using these apps, customers can now scan a barcode or type a product name to check availability and prices for that item.
\n
\n“Shopping on the app offers additional benefits to the customer… they can shop on-the-go, get up to the minute order-tracking information and receive timely notifications for new launches and exclusives,” he adds.
\n
\nAbout half of Amazon’s traffic comes from mobile devices. It is investing big bucks in India — it announced in July 2014 a $2-billion investment in operations — and is expected to put aside a significant share to boost mobile initiatives. An “Appiness Day” hosted in November generated four times the traffic compared to a regular day. For good reason too. “While the shopping activity on PC peaks at certain times of the day, we see that shopping on mobile increases through the day,” says Sahi.
\n
\n

\n\t <\/span><\/div>\nMobile-only Ventures<\/strong>
\n
\nIf the elephant is beginning to dance, the flyweights aren’t ducking for cover. New startups are standing up to be counted. For example, in Mumbai, TinyOwl, a food ordering startup, hasn’t even bothered with a web presence. Instead, the company proudly calls itself a mobile-only (as opposed to a mobile-first) venture. “Many people have used the internet for the first time on smartphones,\" says Harshvardhan Mandad, a cofounder of the startup. “The future is mobile and we want to build a company for it.”
\n
\nWhen the firm was founded in 2013, it started small, focussing only on restaurants that deliver in Mumbai (it has since signed up with over 4,000), before casting its sights further. Now, TinyOwl is on a roll. The firm had quickly raised two rounds of venture capital financing from the likes of Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture and in February it inked a deal for its third tranche of funding. Investors seem to like the company’s mobile-only model.
\n
\n“We want to expand to four or five cities such as Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad,” says Mandad. “When we went live in Mumbai, we estimated that we had around 60% of the restaurants with delivery services… we want to follow a similar model in these cities too.”
\n
\nIn January this year, Paytm’s Sharma, via flagship company One97 Communications, raised $635 million from Chinese internet giant Alibaba. The move was validation of a business that was built the other way around compared to the competition.
\n
\nPaytm has become perhaps the most recognised prepaid mobile wallet in the business. Even as other companies consider their mobile wallet options, Paytm has forged full steam ahead. The number of wallets increased from over 13 million to over 26 million from September last year to now and is expected to race to 100 million by the end of 2015. “We have bet our business on mcommerce,” says Shekhar.
\n
\nThe bets seem to be paying off — the firm has racked up a billion dollars in GMV on its year-old mobile marketplace, with 18,000 merchants already signed up and live and another 20,000 in the queue. Shekhar is also building out his backbone — his mobile wallet — to allow peer-to-peer money transfers with zero fees and no intermediary such as a bank between his customers.
\n
\n“Unlike traditional ecommerce players, 90% of our customers are on prepaid mobile wallets,” says Shekhar. “Our business is therefore more efficient because we don’t waste time and money chasing after cash on delivery payments.” Mobile devices, it appears, have become central to the strategy of India’s internet commerce startups. With 4G around the corner and mobile data subscriber numbers exploding, the opportunity to mine India’s massive market may be just beginning.
\n
\n
\nMobile Wallets, anyone?<\/strong>
\n
\nCash on delivery (CoD) accounts for around three-quarters of all orders delivered by ecommerce companies, as wary consumers shy away from using their cards. CoD is an inefficient process for these firms (each pick up costs Rs 30-50) and is replete with returns (of ordered products).
\n
\n
\n
\n
\nAs India’s mcommerce market gets set for take-off, a prolonged process could deter users from ordering off their phones. The success of firms such as Paytm, with its mobile wallet (prepaid orders account for 90% of its business), may point to an easier path to success. Prepaid mobile wallet is a prepaid payment option for customers to pay for products and services online with a couple of taps on their device. No credit card details or PINs need to be entered, making it a faster payment method.
\n
\nAlready, global giants such as Google, Amazon and Facebook are investing heavily in mobile wallets, and more Indian firms could follow suit. “We will have around 100 million mobile wallets by the end of the year,” says Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm.
\n
\nOther startups chasing the mcommerce market too say that a mobile wallet is a must. “We are considering several options to give our customers this option,” says Ankit Khanna of Snapdeal. Large rivals such as Flipkart and smaller specialist upstarts such as Urban Ladder and Quikr, as well as mobile-only ventures such as TinyOwl and Lybrate too say they are in various stages of piecing together a wallet to simplify payments.\n\n<\/body>","next_sibling":[{"msid":46648611,"title":"BSNL introdcues NGN technology","entity_type":"ARTICLE","link":"\/news\/industry\/bsnl-introdcues-ngn-technology\/46648611","category_name":null,"category_name_seo":"industry"}],"related_content":[],"msid":46648668,"entity_type":"ARTICLE","title":"How mobile phone is fuelling transactions at ecommerce ventures like Paytm, Quikr","synopsis":"Roughly half the online transactions on some of India\u2019s most exciting ecommerce startups are via mobile phones. That proportion can only increase.","titleseo":"industry\/how-mobile-phone-is-fuelling-transactions-at-ecommerce-ventures-like-paytm-quikr","status":"ACTIVE","authors":[{"author_name":"Rahul Sachitanand","author_link":"\/author\/6230\/rahul-sachitanand","author_image":"https:\/\/etimg.etb2bimg.com\/authorthumb\/6230.cms?width=100&height=100&hostid=268","author_additional":{"thumbsize":false,"msid":6230,"author_name":"Rahul Sachitanand","author_seo_name":"rahul-sachitanand","designation":"Editor","agency":false}}],"Alttitle":{"minfo":""},"artag":"ET Bureau","artdate":"2015-03-22 11:58:50","lastupd":"2015-03-22 12:20:49","breadcrumbTags":["industry","Smartphone","Quikr","Ecommerce","Insights","PayTM","mobile transaction"],"secinfo":{"seolocation":"industry\/how-mobile-phone-is-fuelling-transactions-at-ecommerce-ventures-like-paytm-quikr"}}" data-news_link="//www.iser-br.com/news/industry/how-mobile-phone-is-fuelling-transactions-at-ecommerce-ventures-like-paytm-quikr/46648668">