E-commerce may be growing at a rapid pace in India but companies selling products and services online are increasingly taking the offline route to earn revenue: they are setting up centres to reach to the chunk of the population that does not have access to the internet.
Sandeep Murthy, chief executive officer of Cleartrip.com, says 90% of bookings for the travel industry take place offline. “We can’t afford to miss the offline opportunity,” he added.
Cleartrip has tied up with the Future Group to set up dedicated corners at six Big Bazaar outlets on a pilot basis. The company chose a partner for the initiative to avoid difficulties of setting up own infrastructure, he said. ?Our core competency is not managing space. The Big Bazaar guys are well versed on it. After evaluating the success of the pilot project, we will look for more offline expansions,? he added. Jobs, matrimonials and travel are said to be the most successful verticals on the online platform. Recently, portals have also added buying and selling of automobiles and real estate to their offerings. For established online players, expanding the reach of their offline centres is one of the major focus areas for this fiscal.
Shaadi.com operates a separate division called Shaadi Point, for offline activities. The company has 151 centres across 87 cities in India. It plans to cross 200 centres this fiscal.
BharatMatrimony.com Pvt Ltd will expand its offline marriage bureaus to 300 centres across the country by 2008. The company hopes to extend this initiative to150 cities. At present, it has about 100 centres across 60 cities.
J Murugavel, chief executive officer, BharatMatrimony, says the centres offer marriage counselling services and operate on a franchisee model. The offline centres target parents who do not have access to the internet.