Browsing Tag

shopclues

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Building For Bharat : The ShopClues Story at UnPluggd

This UnPluggd, Co-founder & CEO of ShopClues – Sanjay Sethi shared the ShopClues story and gave some valuable insights on how they build for Bharat!

After staying in the US for more than 15 years, Sanjay and his four friends decided to move back to India and start shop clues in 2012.

They observed that retail is very fragmented in India and believed that the next wave of e-commerce growth would come from Tier one & Tier 2 cities – The Bharat. With the vision to serve Bharat, they started shopclues as a managed marketplace. To scale and provide an excellent customer experience they provided the merchants with tools, technology, and services.

Today, they have 5 lakh merchants, 25 million customers and more than 50 million SKUS. They have managed to achieve all this with a funding of less than $ 200 million while their competitors have raised more than $ 7 Billion.

Sanjay ended the talk by addressing the fact that when you zero in on your consumer, reach out with the right value proposition and then start solving their Problems – Magic will happen!

‘Between India and Bharat, How Shopclues Evolved’ : Meet Sanjay Sethi @UnPluggd

The story of Shopclues entering the Indian startup ecosystem and competing with well-funded e-commerce boys is similar to the tale of David vs. Goliath!

sanjay-sethi-shopclues

Shopclues was founded in 2011 and was pretty much one of the last entrants in the e-commerce space. E-commerce is one of the most competitive segments in the Indian Startup ecosystem and it’s difficult for new players to come and compete with existing well-funded E-commerce giants.

Shopclues from the beginning was very clear that to succeed in the e-commerce industry they have to diverge, differentiate and create their niche. Else, they might end up looking like a man with a split personality – selling both luxury and mass market products.

ShopClues noticed that nobody was representing the bazaars or bringing the actual traders of India online. They decided to be a mass market retailer. The categories, customers, and merchants they targeted determined their success.

Currently, more than 3.5 million orders are shipped every month with over a 50 million products to choose from and a merchant base of 130,000 sellers.

Did Shopclues have the “Last Mover Advantage” or did they just get the product (mass) market fit right and executed brilliantly?

This UnPluggd, hear it straight from the horse’s mouth as CEO of ShopClues, Sanjay Sethi would be speaking on ‘Between India and Bharat, How Shopclues Evolved.’

Still haven’t booked your tickets? Book Now

About UnPluggd
Date: Nov 25th & 26th, 2016
Venue: Park Plaza hotel (Marathahalli), Bangalore
URL: http://nextbigwhat.com

Limited Offer: Use Coupon code WE20 to avail 20% off (until 22nd November) or Book more than 3 or more tickets and get 35% off!

Shopclues Joins The Unicorn Club; Raises Series E Funding Led By GIC

Company Name : Shopclues
Funding Amount : Undisclosed
Investor(s) GIC, Tiger Global, Nexus Venture Partners.
Funding Round : Series E

Online retailer ShopClues raised an undisclosed amount of funding in its Series E round.  With this deal, ShopClues’ valuation stands at more than $1.1 billion.

shopclues

The round is led by Singapore based GIC. Existing investors, including Tiger Global and Nexus Venture Partners have also participated in this round of funding.

Sanjay Sethi, CEO & Co-founder, ShopClues said, “ShopClues has consistently demonstrated that hyper-growth and strong business fundamentals are not mutually exclusive. The recent addition of GIC and the continued strong support from our existing investors is a validation of our capital efficiency with a clear path to profitability. This investment will enable us to double our focus on digitizing our merchants’ businesses so that they scale to fully leverage the opportunity online commerce provides them.”

The company in a statement said that ShopClues’ GMV has grown over 4X since January 2015, and the business is shipping out over 3.5 Million items on a monthly basis, attracting a traffic of more than 100 Million visits a month.

The capital raised will be used to focus on building and rolling out new products to enable the SME merchants to digitize their business and to further entrench itself as the e-commerce operating system on the cloud.

ShopClues Invests In Personal Assistant App, HeyBiz

Company Name : HeyBiz
Funding Amount : Undisclosed
Investor(s) Shopclues . .
Funding Round : Seed Round

ShopClues recently invested an undisclosed amount in HeyBiz mobile app. The investment will be directed towards enhancing the product and expanding its market base in cities across India.

heybiz

Founder by Bhartesh Chhibbar in January 2015, HeyBiz helps users discover local shops and is available on both Android and iOS platforms.

HeyBiz Founder and CEO, Bhartesh Chhibbar said, “We are excited about the new partnership with ShopClues as we see a big overlap in our respective brand ideologies and vision. With the capital infusion, we are confident that we are one step closer to realising our goal of making HeyBiz the market leader in the Sales-Marketing-Support platform for our businesses and the one-stop mobile shop for our users.We intend on expanding into newer geographies like Chandigarh, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Lucknow and Jaipur.”

Sanjay Sethi, CEO &  Cofounder, ShopClues, said, “In this digital era, we are glad that someone is there to bridge the chasm between customers and local businesses. In HeyBiz, we saw the potential to become the one-stop platform to mend this gap. The ease of use of the app and the reliable information that it accumulates and disseminates about businesses, makes this a promising venture that’s only likely to grow in the future. So, we decided to lend this 10-month old company the financial impetus that can really enhance its reach and operations.”

Earlier, Shopclues had raised a funding of $100mn in Series C led by Tiger Global partners. The company recently also stated that it is planning to invest close to $50 million in acquiring startups and plans to accelerate expansion.

Shopclues Launches Chat Feature For Buyers And Sellers To Engage Directly

ShopClues has introduced a chat feature called ShopClues Connect which connects buyers directly with sellers for added information on product, price and availability.

ShopClues Connect also enables buyers to engage directly with sellers in their vicinity to negotiate delivery timelines, ask for details on warranty, returns etc.

ShopClues customers can connect through the marketplace’s Android app for now. Buyers receive push notifications on their Android devices when a seller responds to their query. If merchants miss the message on the Store Manager, they will be notified by email about the queries.

Sellers can currently chat with the buyer from the chat panel of their Store Manager. Soon, the company will also launch an app for merchants to chat directly from their mobile devices.