Online retail in India is set to grow from current market size of $1.6 billion to $8.8 billion by 2016, and so the services enabling it. Over the past one year, we have seen the launch of SAAS based ecommerce platforms such as Infibeam’s Buildabazaar and Zepo that enable small business to have online stores.
To capture growing numbers of merchants coming online – Bangalore based Cloudnix Software Labs has launched Shopnix, an eCommerce platform that brings together all technology components required to build and run an eCommerce store. Shopnix allows merchants, businesses and individuals to set up ecommerce stores in few minutes with features like ‘Store Manager’ that helps them in running their daily store operations.
With its store manager feature, merchants can upload products, manage inventory, track and manage orders, customize shopping cart amongst others. Shopnix offers integration with payment gateways like PayU and Zaakpay for accepting credit cards, debit cards and Internet payments from day one. Additionally, the team claims that Inbuilt Search Engine Optimization (Onsite SEO) gives merchants higher search rankings for driving more free traffic to their online store.
“In June 2012 we launched a BETA of Shopnix and started engaging with a closed group of customers. We did this to understand their requirements better and work closely with them. Since then we have signed up close to 300+ customers from a wide variety of backgrounds”, said Nandan Pujar, co-founder Shopnix.
Currently the platform enables more than 300 stores ranging from mass etailers to city focused online stores such as SapnaOnline, Kiranawalla and Freshbazaar.
When we compared pricing plan of Shopnix with other platforms such as Buildabazaar and Zepo, Shopnix looks to be fairly competitive. For example, if a merchant chooses basic subscription plan of Zepo and Buildabazaar, he or she has to pay Rs. 1.35 and 3.33 respectively for uploading per product, however with Shopnix the cost of uploading per product pegs around Re. 1.
At present. Shopnix offers 4 plans- Starter, Pro and Premium available at monthly subscription fee of Rs. 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 and 10,000 respectively.
For small businesses and individuals for whom Rs. 2000 per month subscription fee seems to be little high, given that they won’t cross more than 500 products soon – the team has launched “Quicky” plan. With ‘Quicky’ plan, customers will be able to upload upto 500 products for Rs 1000 per month. They will get access to all the standard features of its platform on this plan.
If you are an offline player planning to go online, give Shopnix a spin and share your comments.
