flipkart - an online shop

Flipkart

Introduction• Online Retail Industry

• It is one of the leading e-commerce players in the country

• With over 11.5 million book titles listed, 11 different categories, more than 2 million registered users and sale of 30000 items a day.

• Founded by Sachin bansal & Binny bansal in Bangalore, Karnataka in 2007.

• Started with initial capital of INR 4 lakh.

• 7 warehouses, offices and delivery centers (2011).

• Revenue is of 75 Crore (FY 2010-11).

• 4600+ employees till December 2011.

• Subsidiaries are “We Read”, “Mime 360” and “Lets Buy”.

eCommerce solution provider India

http://ifour-consultancy.com/eCommerce-solutions.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flipkart_india.png

Management Team

Sachin BansalCEO and Co-

founder

Binny BansalCOO and Co-

founder

Sachin spent his early years in Chandigarh. He graduated from IIT-Delhi with a degree in Computer Engineering. In 2006 he joined Amazon.com in India which he

later left to set-up Flipkart.

As CEO, Sachin oversees all the customer facing activities of the company ranging from technology to marketing. He is also in charge of Flipkart's corporate divisions

which include the finance and legal departments.

An avid gaming enthusiast, Sachin likes to spend most of his free time with his family.

Born and raised in Chandigarh, Binny went on to get a degree in Computer Engineering from IIT Delhi. He had a brief stint at Amazon before taking the

entrepreneurial plunge with Flipkart.

At Flipkart, Binny oversees all operational activities that come into play from the time the customer places an order till the time of delivery. This spans across

divisions like warehousing, logistics and customer support.

Binny is also passionate about soccer and NBA. An active sportsman, he used to captain his school basketball and soccer teams.




Management Team

Mekin MaheswariPresident, Technology

Sujeet KumarPresident, Operations

Mekin completed his B.E. from PESIT Bangalore in 2002. He started his career with Yahoo! and then went on to join Ugenie where he created weRead, a

successful social network around books.

At Flipkart, Mekin is responsible for overseeing the company’s technological operations. These include innovation and application of technology in areas

starting from supply chain to website management.

Mekin is an avid sports fan and was actively involved in badminton, table tennis and cricket during his school and college days.

Sujeet completed his engineering from IIT Delhi. He worked in the KPO industry and orchestrated several freelance projects before joining Flipkart in 2008.

At Flipkart he is responsible for overseeing supply-chain, warehousing and logistics. He is also in charge of business development for all categories.

Sujeet loves playing bridge and poker.




•Flipkart was established in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, both alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

•They worked for Amazon.com before quitting and founding their own company.

•Initially they used word of mouth marketing to popularize their company.

•A few months later, the company sold its first book on flipkart.com - John Woods' Leaving Microsoft to Change the World.

•Today, as per Alexa traffic rankings, Flipkart is among the top 30 Indian web sites and has been credited with being India's largest online bookseller with over 11 million titles on offer.

•Flipkart broke even in March 2010 and claims to have had at least 100% growth every quarter since its founding.

•The store started with selling books and in 2010 branched out to selling CDs, DVDs, mobile phones & accessories, cameras, computers, computer accessories and peripherals, pens & office supplies, other electronic items such as home appliances, kitchen appliances, personal care gadgets, health care products etc.

•As of today, Flipkart employs over 4672 people.

Company History




Funding

• Initially funded by the Bansals themselves with 4 Lakhs(INR).

• Flipkart has since then raised two rounds of funding from venture capital funds Accel India (in 2009) and Tiger Global Management (up to the tune of US$10 million) (in 2010).

• Private equity firms Carlyle and General Atlantic are in talks to jointly invest about $150 million to $200 million in Flipkart, according to sources.




Acquisitions

2010: WEREAD, a social book discovery tool.The stated goal was to give Flipkart a social recommendation platform for buyers to make informed decisions based on recommendations from people within their social network.

2011: Mime360, a digital content platform company.

2011: Chakpak.com is a Bollywood news site that offers updates, news, photos and videos. Flipkart acquired the rights to Chakpak’s digital catalogue which includes 40,000 filmographies, 10,000 movies and close to 50,000 ratings. Flipkart has categorically said that it will not be involved with the original site and will not use the brand name.

2012: Letsbuy.com is India's second largest e-retailer in electronics. Flipkart has bought the company for an estimated US$ 25 million.




Screenshot




Research Questions• How did Flipkart get on to the top of India’s e-shopping market in just 4 years?

• What were the strategies implemented by Flipkart to create online business in India?

• There are millions of retail websites and not many have achieved even a fraction of the attention that Flipkart has. What is it that makes Flipkart standout?

• What does Flipkart have that makes its model so Robust?

• What is there strategy behind acquisition of lets buy.

• What is there future road map?

• What are the major threats for Flipkart? eCommerce solution provider India



Order Lifecycle• Attract users to the site Family, Friends, SEO, SEM,WoM, Brand Building

• Provide selection Make it easy to Find & Discover products

• Provide details to evaluate a product Description, Specifications, UGC.

• Price well Have to be competitive to the most obvious options

• Provide convenient payment options Online, COD

• Confirm payment




Get the item Procure from Supplier (Just-in-time) (Supplier selection)

Keep Inventory (Inventory Prediction, Planning)

Clean & Check for sanity Pages missing, MRP printed lesser than told to you

Pack the item Tamper proof, weather proof, breakage proof

Select courier & hand-over Courier performances vary across regions a LOT

Get tracking id & communicate to customer Follow-up for timely delivery

Take care of returns (faulty product/user changes their mind)Minimize returns

Order Lifecycle (Cont…)




• They will be far ahead in the game, by the time Amazon make a full fledge entry with their own brand retail products in India.

• It will make Flipkart stronger in the field of E-retailing.

• This acquisition fits in to their strategy of building dominant shares in all the categories they operate in.

• The price they paid for this opportunity was very attractive.

• This will now, allow them to accelerate faster and to get to a share similar to what they enjoy in online books category.

• This will strengthen the position of Flipkart in Indian market in light of the quiet entry of Amazon in Indian e-commerce industry through jungle.com.

Why they acquired lets buy




What Went Right for Flipkart!

• The first and foremost was that we Indians were discarding our stone-age ways and beginning to shop online.

• Another thing the two entrepreneurs, Sachin and Binny Bansal, did right was that they started off with books – a low capital investment and a fast turn-around time.

• But the best thing they did was that they understood that too be successful in India, you need to be the God of Distribution.

• In India, it’s amazing Logistics that prove to be the game-changer and that’s exactly what the folks at Flipkart have done.




Challenges Faced By Flipkart

• Initially when they started out, it wasn’t easy for us to earn the trust of the customer.

• Handling customer complaints, without having a ‘face’ to our customer service proves to be bit of a challenge at times.

• Not having the ‘display’ advantage, the ‘browsing’ feature and not being able to carry out promotional activities are some other obvious challenges.

• The discomfort of paying by cards, on account of security fears is another challenge. They have now tried to address that by introducing the ‘cash-on-delivery’ option.

• The fact that highest number of orders and sales get registered during weekends proves to be tough at times for logistics and customer service.

• The fact that we have to work 24 / 7 and the customer perceptions around it also bring some difficulty (For example, the customer places an order at 12 am and counts the number of hours for delivery right from then!)




What makes it stand out?

• The procurement model is at the heart of Flipkart’s success, as most delays or troubles occur in this part of business.

• Flipkart employed consignment model i.e. procurement based on demand.

• It is the robust logistics at Flipkart that sets it apart from other wannabe e-commerce sites.

• An amazingly well-oiled warehousing and delivery system..

• They offer a huge range of titles (more than 7 million) which really sets them apart from the rest of the crowd.




• Flipkart has been mostly marketed by word of mouth advertising.

• Customer satisfaction has been their best marketing medium.

• Flipkart very wisely used SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Google Ad-words as the marketing tools to have a far reach in the online world.

• Flipkart.com official Face book page has close to 9 lac 'likes'. Flipkart recently launched a series of 3 ads with the tag line - "No Kidding No worries"

• Kids were used to create the adverts to send out the message - if a kid can do it, you can also do it.

• All in all to create a great customer experience.

Marketing Strategy




Flipkart’s Success mantra!• Great customer service

Flipkart users are more satisfied than that of their competitors. Great customer service has been its hallmark.

• Easy to use website, hassle free payment system

The user interface is sleek and easy to use.

• Cash on delivery/Card on delivery mode of payment

This has been a major instrument in Flipkart’s success. Almost 60% of its sales happen through this mode. Cash on delivery created trust in the minds of Indian customers who were always weary of making payments online.

• Focused on user experience

Every other e-commerce site, tried to cram the maximum of amount of information possible into every single page where as Flipkart focused on providing only the relevant info.




Advertisements By Flipkart


Flipkart has added a prepaid Wallet feature to its e-commerce platform that allows shoppers to store money on the site and use it to purchase items, without having to reach for their credit card for each transaction.

Prepaid Wallet feature


Startups Hiring? Do it the Flipkart way!

Hiring or rather right hiring is one of the critical factors contributing to a startup’s success, So some of the key criteria that the Flipkart team looks at while hiring are :

• They typically don’t look at specialists to come on board rather they look out for generalists with the attitude to learn and adapt to the fast pace of growth .

• “Everyone in the team on a collective and individual level needs to have a high sense of ownership. This is something which clearly differentiates a high performing organization from the others.

• Your hiring process is the best brand campaign for you – “Transparency in hiring is one of the best ways to attract the right kind of talent




Threats to its Crown• There are no major foreseeable threats in the future.

• The company has built a great brand name, they just have to maintain and enhance the same.

• Need to keep introducing more products, adapting to the changing needs of the customer with time.

• The entry of Amazon.com in 2012 in the Indian e-commerce space has been cited as a big challenge to Flipkart.

• However i think that Flipkart is a respected Brand name in India and should be able to compete with Amazon.

• Remember Amazon being a very big company can bring in serious competition to Flipkart, since Amazon can bear more losses in the beginning to gain customer base.




Threats to its Crown(Cont..)

• But again Indian market is growing at a rapid pace as access to internet increases and people become more aware of e-commerce sites and start trusting the same.

• Hence Indian market is sufficiently big at-least for these two giants to co-exist beneficially.




Future Road Map

• They aim at 10 times growth, and eyes at $ 1Billion sales by 2015.

•They will look at bigger investments in their supply chain and technology.

• Investment will be made in large warehouses and increased automation of their process, so that the product is not delayed.

• They intend to enter in to various new categories and expand their current categories as well.

• Everything except for groceries and automobiles will be available on Flipkart in future.

• To go further in the value chain, Flipkart is looking at associations with a larger number of suppliers and partners, both nationally and internationally.




• Flipkart, the first billion dollar Internet company from India(going by 2015 estimates )is by far the leading online store in the nation.

• Now that Amazon is reportedly entering India in early 2012, this news becomes even more significant, considering that Amazon has previously, and unsuccessfully, tried acquiring the company, with Flipkart demanding a very high buyout price.

• With online retail industry in India pegged to reach $1.5 billion (2015), sources suggest that e-commerce is just hotting up in India and we may soon seen many more Internet companies achieving similar success

Conclusion




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