Etail

Flipkart

Online shopping is equated with Flipkarting in India nowadays and that’s what is a clear example of the stupendous growth the online retailer has shown over the years. Flipkart originally started as an online bookstore founded by IIMA alumni Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007. Flipkart now employs over 33,000 people providing thousands of products from national and international brands to hundreds of thousands of customers. India’s answer to global e-tailing brands, Flipkart’s brand is amongst the most admired and respected in India.

FabFurnish

Entrepreneur trio Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal and Vaibhav Aggarwal launched FabFurnish.com in 2012. It is essentially an online content driven marketplace which does retail and delivery of home products at doorsteps. An innovative e-store initially started with 2000 products and progressively scaled to plethora of over 1 lakh products to choose from. The e-store contains 600 plus brands and in 2016, became part of the behemoth Future Group which is India’s biggest organized retail player.

ShopClues

ShopClues.com is an online marketplace headquartered in Gurgaon, India. ShopClues was founded in November 2011 and now has over 400,000 merchants and small businesses listed on its marketplace, and ships more than 3.5 million items every month across all product categories to choose from on the platform catering to almost 42 million visitors every year spread across 9500 locations in the country. Read the interview of ShopClues founder, Sandeep Aggarwal, in this issue of 4Ps B&M.

Lenskart

Lenskart was founded by Peyush Bansal and Amit Chaudhary in 2010 has changed the way people see the world through their lenses. Capturing on a very niche and largely untapped and unorganized sector, the online eyewear portal has galvanized the market with its exceptional growth. The online retailer sells eyeglasses, sunglasses, contact lenses and eyewear accessories with an all India reach including important cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Lenskart gives great discounts and amazing offers on a daily basis. Starting as an online player, Lenskart switched to an omni-channel approach to provide eyewear in hypermarkets, high streets, malls, hospitals and even at home. Lenskart sells 5,000 spectacles a day making it one of India’s top two eyewear firms. Lenskart plans to expand by opening 1,000 brick-and-mortar shops through the franchise model.

SnapDeal

Kunal Bahl, a Wharton graduate along with school friend Rohit Bansal, an alumnus of IIT Delhi founded SnapDeal in 2010. It expanded in September 2011 to become an online marketplace and became one of the most recalled brands. Started as a discount site to provide the best deals to online customers, SnapDeal was amongst the first Unicorns of the Indian eCommerce space and has a plethora of products across categories like mobiles, electronics, home and kitchen, sports, books, restaurants, entertainment, fashion accessories, apparel and footwear.

Indiatimes Shopping

Indiatimes Shopping one of the country’s oldest e-commerce platforms established in early 2000 is a part of India’s leading media house - The Times Group. Envisioned to provide a hassle-free shopping experience and all that a customer wants, Indiatimes offers an extensive range of products in all major categories. Indiatimes shopping has a reach farther and wider than any other e-commerce player in India. As part of the Times Group, Indiatimes Shopping provides and gets considerable synergy from the media conglomerate, ensuring that readers of the publications of the media group have a 360 degree experience. Indiatimes Shopping remains amongst the most liked and respected amongst portals in India.

Paytm

Vijay Shekhar Sharma founded Paytm (a play on Pay Through Mobile), the mobile wallet company in 2010. Today, it offers a full marketplace to consumers on its app mobile and desktop site. Today, Paytm is India’s largest mobile commerce platform with over 100 million wallets and 10 million app downloads. Paytm has scaled to more than 60 Million orders per month. In 2015, Paytm received a license from RBI for starting India’s first payments bank. Paytm has also been rated as one of India’s leading Unicorns.

Pepperfry

Pepperfry is a leading player in the online furniture market. Founded in 2012 by Ambareesh Murty & Ashish Shah, the brand has focused on shifting consumers’ preference of buying furniture online from offline. Pepperfry is a clear leader in this segment with 45-50% market share of the online segment. It has got first mover’s advantage in the category and is extremely differentiated from other players in the market with respect to aspects like variety, pricing, servicing and delivery.

Urban Ladder

Urban Ladder, a Bangalore based start up founded by Ashish Goel, offers a unique selection of stylish, contemporary furniture online. Their online furniture range includes sofas, beds, dining tables, TV units, wardrobes, dressing tables, and many other customized furniture options to choose from. All wooden furniture designs are available online too. The differentiating factor for Urban Ladder is the fact that the portal focuses on providing modern, contemporary and fashionable designs on all their offerings, apart from adhering to world-class standards.

HomeShop18

HomeShop18 is an online and on-air retail and distribution venture of Network 18 Group. HomeShop18 is the pioneer in TV shopping in India as it changed the way India shopped by launching the first 24 hour home shopping TV channel. The company brings the perfect balance between TV shopping and digital/online shopping with India’s best online selling site, HomeShop18.com and HomeShop18 Mobile App. This is the only home shopping site in India that equally caters to the wide customer base through television, online and digital medium.

Quikr

Founded by Pranay Chulet and Jiby Thomas in 2008 as an Indian classified advertising platform, Quikr is headquartered in Bengaluru. It has listings in over 1,000 cities in India in several categories such as mobile phones and household goods. It is now India’s no. 1 online classified platform and aspires to empower every Indian to independently connect with buyers and sellers online. Capitalising on  the brand, Quikr is extending its reach into the online market for cars, real estate, jobs, services and education.