The journey of a product begins with a single click in the online retail industry. An intelligent click can land us the best deals in town in every imaginable category at humongous discounts and multiple payment options. As part of its first campaign, online shopping portal of Homeshop18 claims how the website is a one-stop shopping destination. In an interview with FE?s Twishy, Sundeep Malhotra, CEO and founder of HomeShop18 talks about marketing strategies to engage customers online and make the portal as popular as the TV channel, the acquisition of Coinjoos to launch the books category and the challenges faced in e-commerce. Edited excerpts.
How do you see yourself as a key player in the online retail industry?
HomeShop18.com has been a catalyst in terms of building consumer confidence. Communicating to the customers through the combination of TV and internet makes HomeShop18 more interactive, unique and engaging. We have emerged as a key player due to the depth of our logistics, ability to provide multiple payment options, free home delivery, option of sending products to multiple shipping addresses while placing an order and money back guarantee.
Isn?t your entry into the books category via the acquisition of Coinjoos.com a little late in the day?
E-commerce companies either start with books or with one category. With books you can control quality, delivery and service. Homeshop18 started with a different approach. We started our TV business with multiple categories. Books was the only category which was missing from our portfolio. So, we were left with two options. Either we build the business from scratch or we acquire the expertise from an already established player like Coinjoos.com. We opted for the second route and acquired Coinjoos in order to build our own expertise and vast bank of books portfolio. Investment will be in building the brand, expanding and improving our logistics and product portfolio. The next destination for investment is the IT platform or the tech space.
Which is the best selling product category?
Electronics and home appliances remain the best sellers. Today, HomeShop18 alone accounts for 5% of all digital cameras sold in the country. We have partnered with over 500 marquee brands and offer products across 7 million SKUs from leading brands such as Nokia, LG, Samsung, BlackBerry, Micromax, Spice and Dell. Reebok and Whirlpool have even launched products to sell exclusively through us. We retail over 1,30,000 mobile phones in a month with the figure increasing even further during our sale periods.
What has been the traffic on your website? How many of these are repeat purchasers?
We add a new customer every 5 seconds and have a strong CRM (customer relationship management) base of over 6.1 million customers for both TV and web. The business is growing at a rapid pace and we have become one of the fastest growing e-commerce websites. There has been 300% growth in traffic over the past 12 months with a monthly reach of over 1.7 million unique visitors, with each spending over 7 minutes on the website and more than 25% are repeat customers.
We have reached out to over 3,000 cities across the country and today 30% of our business comes from the top 20 cities and the rest from tier 2-3 cities. TV channels have been used to target tier 2-3 cities. We have used general entertainment channels such as Sony, Zee TV and Colors to reach customers in these cities. Young people have been targeted through MTV and VH1.
Can you tell us about the idea behind your recent TV commercial titled, ?India shops online at HomeShop18.com??
The basic objective is to let customers know that there is another medium to shop in addition to television. Synonymity of a click with a transaction, that is, click=transaction = HomeShop18.com, is the idea of the campaign. HomeShop18.com delivers the best deals at affordable prices at the ?click of a button?. The campaign targets all demographics but the main focus is the youth of India.
How do you see Amazon?s intention to enter India impacting the e-commerce market?
India is a huge market and the potential is quite immense. With some healthy competition and genuine competitors, the industry will only get its share of the much required credibility and trust that it has been looking for. It is critical to build consumer confidence in buying without the touch and feel factor. For this, we need good companies such as Amazon to come and invest in this domain.
A person buying an airline ticket online has no problems in swiping his card but the same person has problems buying a camera or mobile phone online with the same card. Hence, companies should build consumer confidence and invest in products, delivery and quality. Movement of products on a nationwide basis is another challenge. There are too many taxes, legalities and jurisdictions in every state which makes the process more complex.