Breaking Stereotypes: Amazon builds ‘Women Only’ delivery hubs

Managing package delivery is traditionally considered as a man’s job, but Amazon India is all set to break this gender stereotype by launching exclusive ‘women only’ delivery hubs.

Male-Dominated No More

After its research revealed that women are interested to carry out deliveries,Amazon launched the pilot project in Kerala, in January and the second all-female delivery station in Chennai on March 3rd.

In these stations, women handle every task, be it sorting, delegating or delivering orders.

“Our vision is to create opportunities for individuals to realise their potential and transform their lives. We are committed to use our resources and infrastructure of innovation and technology to support the women in our country explore and succeed in what was otherwise a very male dominated sector. We are proud to have pioneered the women only delivery station which is a first-of-its-kind India-specific innovation from Amazon and look forward to help women across communities attain financial independence in life,” sharedSamuel Thomas, Director, Transportation at Amazon India.

Key features of this project:

• Women delivery executives will cover 2-3 kms radius from the delivery station on two-wheelers
• Will deliver approximately 40 packages a day
• No pay gap – equal pay for equal work , same as male employees
• 7am to 7pm work shift
• 20 women have been trained under this project so far
• Ability to ride two-wheelers, read and write in English are the basic qualifications required

Safety precautions

We have heard & read several delivery nightmare stories. Therefore, it is justified to be concerned about the safety of women working at these delivery hubs.

Addressing the above mentioned concern, Thomas revealed, “Taking into consideration safety measures, they have a work window between 7 am to 7 pm and there is a helpline number that these associates can dial in anytime for support.”

Positive response

Divya Syam, one of the delivery station managers expressed her gratitude, “I am glad that Amazon.in stepped into my life to provide me with the perfect opportunity to work as a service partner and set an example for many women in the country. With the increasing popularity of e-commerce platforms and with the support of my very hardworking and dedicated delivery associates, I am certain we will be able to overcome all hindrances and grow in this male-dominated business. I urge all women to get out of their comfort zone and explore the joys of entrepreneurship.”

This is a great initiative by Amazon. It is not only creating equal employment opportunities for women, but also filling the huge delivery network gap.

Flipkart launches mobile wallet ‘Flipkart Money’; Facebook partners with CitrusPay

A lot is happening in the digital payments world right now. A new competitor joined the mobile wallets list, as Flipkart rolled out ‘Flipkart Money’. Also Facebook tied up with Payment Gateway, CitrusPay to enable ecommerce transactions through the social networking site.

Read on to know the details.

Flipkart Money to compete with FreeCharge & Paytm

The latest development by Flipkart, comes 6 months after the online marketplace acquired payments startup– FX Mart.

Highlights of Flipkart money:

• As of now the service is available only to Android smartphones & tablet users
• Transactions up to Rs. 10,000 at a time using a credit/debit card & net banking is allowed
• Rs. 25,000 can be added to the wallet per month

Flipkart Money can help the etailer to reduce COD orders, increase cashless transactions, and offer seamless payment & quick refunds to its customers. This will make the platform more buyer and seller friendly.

The biggest advantage is that with the creation of this new service, Flipkart has the same ammunition as marketplaces Snapdeal that has Freecharge Digital Wallet and Paytm, which was always an online payment platform. 

Facebook partners with CitrusPay to cash in on ecommerce boom

Possesing an effective payment solution is one of the most important factors for the success of any ecommerce business. Social Media giant, Facebook wants to explore the growing Indian ecommerce market and understands this point very well.

First, it allowed brands to set up shop on the networking platform and added a ‘Buy’ button. Taking its ecommerce aspirations even further, the popular network site recently tied-up with payment gateway solutions & mobile wallet company, CitrusPay.

CitrusPay’s Managing Director Amrish Rau affirmed, “Social payments are increasing exponentially. More and more businesses are using social channels for business instead of dedicated e-commerce websites. We are keen to enable Indian consumers to buy directly from social posts on Facebook and Twitter.”

Will Facebook disrupt ecommerce ranking?

As of 2015, Snapdeal has 60 million+ registered users and Flipkart 26 million+. On the other hand, Facebook India has 125+ million user base. That’s a huge difference.

Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal are currently leading the way, but if Facebook enters the ecommerce market in a big way as it appears, then the biggies might face stiff competition.

Paytm reaches out to online sellers with multilingual App

Ecommerce marketplace, Paytm is witnessing increased engagement from online sellers after recently launching a Hindi interface on its app, to improve communication. As online sellers get to read information in a more familiar language, this has increased activity in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Paytm hopes to onboard 5 lakh sellers by December.

Current no. of sellers (approx):

• Snapdeal = 2.5 Lakhs
• Paytm = 1.5 Lakhs
• Flipkart = 85,000

Apart from multiplying the seller base, Paytm is also aiming to use the Hindi app to build its online-to-offline operations. It currently delivers electronics and white goods to 10 cities and is hoping to add to the list in the not to distant future.

“The top-10 cities of seller-app usage include metros as well as cities like Ahmedabad, Surat, Jaipur and others. These sellers usually deal in unstructured categories such as fashion, home and lifestyle products, and the demand to develop a local-language interface has come from the seller meetings. We will be adding more local languages over the next quarter as we have seen increasing number of sellers in the age group of 20-30 years using the app from Hubli, Rourkela and other cities,” said Sudhanshu Gupta, vice-president of business, Paytm.

Ecommerce marketplace recently announced that it plans to invest Rs. 500 crore in logistics to aid online sellers. It also rolled out ‘Paytm Force’ and SEED projectto empower sellers.

Niche Etailers Disrupt Ecommerce Trinity’s Business; IRCTC proclaims ‘explore us to increase sales’

Last week IOS shared Morgan Stanley’s report that revealed how the combined GMV of Indian ecommerce industry’s trinity – Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal was more than the top ten offline retailers in 2015.

While the ecommerce leaders did gain more than offline firms, it also lost online market share in 2015 compared to last year due to small niche players, as per the Morgan Stanley report.

Niche and small players eating into dominant players’ market share

Popularity of category-focused niche etailers such as online lingerie store Zivame, furniture portals Urban Ladder, Pepperfry and jewellery platforms Carat Lane, Velvet Case, Blue Stonegrew tremendously in 2015. Investors including Ratan Tata poured in millions of funds to back such players and helped them to expand aggressively.

On the other hand online marketplaces tried hard to keep excessive discounts in check last year. This is why it seems niche etailers managed to grab a tiny portion of the market share from the big players, as buyers wandered away in search of other options.

As per the Morgan Stanley report:

• napdeal’s market share in terms of GMV dropped from 32% in 2014 to 26%  in 2015
• Amazon India’s market share in terms of GMV dropped from 15% in 2014 to  12% in 2015
• Flipkart’s market share increased from 44% in 2014 to 45% in 2015
• Combined market share of Snapdeal, Amazon and Flipkart declined from 91% in 2014 to 83% in 2015
• Niche etailers market share increased from 2% in 2014 to 10% in 2015
• > Snapdeal’s market share in terms of GMV dropped from 32% in 2014 to 26%  in 2015
• > Amazon India’s market share in terms of GMV dropped from 15% in 2014 to  12% in 2015
• > Flipkart’s market share increased from 44% in 2014 to 45% in 2015
• > Combined market share of Snapdeal, Amazon and Flipkart declined from 91% in 2014 to 83% in 2015
• > Niche etailers market share increased from 2% in 2014 to 10% in 2015

• A positive sign according to industry experts

  Small players gaining market share indicate that there’s a lot of room for others in the ecommerce industry besides the top three players.
• Can IRCTC help ecommerce biggies?
• The underlying message of this one sentence appears to be ‘Ecommerce leaders and other players, come and explore IRCTC’s huge potential and increase your revenue.’
  And why not? With 390 million registered users, 250 million active users and 4.15 lakhaverage bookings per day, the portal is one of the most visited online sites in India.
• While Amazon India has already collaborated with Indian Railways, others like Snapdeal, Paytm, Flipkart, and Shopclues should consider tying-up too to increase their market share.

Holidays, Events & Occasions that impact ecommerce sellers in India

With every burgeoning year, the Indian ecommerce Industry gets better and better. At the forefront of this phenomenon, is the spike in sales during the festive sale period which coincides with many traditional holidays and events. While festivals and holidays take place throughout the year in India, the October to December period is widely considered the festive sales period, as it fits in nicely with a lot of celebrated holidays, like Diwali.

As online sellers it is very important to forecast for busy holiday sale periods and plan accordingly to ensure enough inventory is available to meet demand. It is also essential to execute effective promotional campaigns to make sure you get your message across in time, as there is a lot of cash up for grabs.

So just how much money changes hands during the busy festive period?

In October 2015, before the festive sales sprang into action an insightful ASSOCHAM reportproclaimed that this year’s festive season would cross $8 billion, 5 times bigger than the previous year. It also included 5 Indian festivals in no particular order that would contribute to the total:

• > Diwali
• > Navratri
• > Durga Puja
• > Dusshera
• > Christmas

• The biggies’ take on festival sales

  The recent festive season was dominated by Flipkart’s ‘Big Billion Days sale’, Snapdeal’s ‘Yeh Diwali Dil ki Deal Wali’ sale and Amazon’s ‘Great Indian Festive Sale’. It is very interesting to read what the big 2 homegrown ecommerce marketplaces had to say about holiday sales in 2013, a year before their respective festive sales exploded.

• So how did the Marketplaces get on during the recent festival period

• n 2014 the big marketplaces suffered from inexperience in dealing with massive orders, which caused server problems and delivery issues. Thankfully in 2015 they were better prepared. For instance in 2014, Flipkart’s Big Billion Day sale was carried out on one single day, but in 2015 it spread the Big Billion Days sale over 5 days as it chased a target of Rs. 3,250 crores sales. In comparison, ambitious marketplace Shopclues announced a target of Rs. 1,600 crores for the festive period.
  For all three marketplaces the month of October generated the most traffic. This however does not tell the whole picture as Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale was app-only in 2015 which means traffic would have been even higher.
  Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale and Amazon’s Great Indian Festive Sale were conducted from the 13th to 17th of October, while Snapdeal chose to promote a different category every Monday during its ‘Yeh Diwali Dil ki Deal Wali’ sale. Amazon took advantage of Navratri festival which fell on 13th to 22nd October last year and held its Great Indian Festival Sale, which also coincided with Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale. This IOS article gives a glance at the busy 5 day sale period of the big marketplaces. The marketplaces also created many opportunities for online sellers which was pleasing to see.

  What Online Sellers and experts had to say about ecommerce festivals?

  We asked online sellers their opinion on which 5 festivals and holidays impact ecommerce in India, based on their experience in the industry. This is what they had to say:
• We can clearly see from these online sellers opinions that there are quite a number of different occasions that sellers can promote their products and services to increase sales.

  Is it festive holidays that sellers should be planning for?

  While giving his views on the most important ecommerce events in the calendar, Category Manager, Devashish Naik from Multi-channel ecommerce solutions provider, Browntape, explained that it is actually the pre-sales period that sellers should plan for.

• Are all festive events relevant for sellers?

  Naik’s Browntape colleague, Category Manager, Minaz Sajan voiced similar sentiments and went on to add that while major holidays are important it is also imperative for sellers to realise that not all holidays sales will be relevant for their product.

• What opportunities exist Globally for Indian Online Sellers?

  From the above statements, what is intriguing is the fact that events such as Valentine’s Day, Black Friday & Cyber Monday which are not considered traditional events in India, are slowly creeping into the shopping calendar. This Business Insider article ranks Diwali in 3rd place among the global ecommerce holidays so we are now coming full circle:
  1. Valentine’s Day
  2. Black Friday & Cyber Monday
  3. Diwali
  4. Chinese New year
  5. Japan’s Summer Bonus season
  6. Only recently we saw the success of Valentine’s Day in India which achieved on average bigger ticket size purchases than Diwali. Also last year we witnessed eBay hosting anextended Black Friday sale in the country to entice Indian Shoppers.

     This also works out well for Indian sellers as there are now opportunities to take part in global selling events. For example during the recent Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales in the US, the Amazon Global Seller Program allowed Indian Sellers to participate by stocking up on their products in advance. Items that might be snapped up by Indian NRI’s in the US such as traditional clothing got priority as there is a big market for non-resident Indians abroad attempting to keep traditions alive.

     Mind you not all Global sales will be successful. As more events compete for a share of the consumer’s wallet, some will succeed while others will perish. Take for instance in 2015,Google wound down its Great Online Shopping Festival, while on the other hand Alibabathrew caution to the wind and went out and broke the online shopping record on Singles Day.

     Great opportunities ahead for sellers

     To conclude with we have identified 3 key opportunities for Indian Online Sellers in regards to prosperous ecommerce shopping festivals:

     1.Traditional Indian Holidays

     With an exceedingly high number of traditional holidays being celebrated in India, which includes everything from Pongol to Raksha Bandhan, there are certainly a lot dates for online sellers to ponder over. Paytm even mentioned the contribution of the Indian Wedding seasonto its sales.

     2.Marketplace Events

     The rise of Marketplace events such as Flipkart’s Big Billion Days Sale to coincide with Navratri and Myntra’s ‘End of Reason Sale’ to follow the end of a fashion season, have struck a chord with shoppers and sellers alike.

     3.Global Occasions

     Global Occasions like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are also providing great scope for Indian online sellers to trade across borders. To put things in perspective, currently the Indian Festive season is worth $8 billion, while in the US it has touched $69 billion.

     The important thing for Online sellers to keep in mind, is to recognise which sales will suit your products and then go out and plan for them like there is no tomorrow!