Its time for innovation in Indian e-commerce segment. And if being an e-commerce startup you haven’t yet come to terms with this reality, you should better close your shop. ShopClues though, which is one of India’s top 5 e-commerce platforms in terms of GMV, knows the tricks of this trade, and has hence come with a new ‘Neighbourhood market’ feature on both its web & mobile platforms.
‘Neighbourhood market’, as the name suggests, is pretty much like your neighbourhood market, albeit in an online avatar. With Neighbourhood market, Shopclues is looking to connect local store owners with customers near to them — pretty much like an ‘Uber for local items’. With the launch of this new feature, the company is looking to create opportunities for India’s local sellers, which had to bear the brunt of India’s surging e-commerce segment.
Customers can browse through the products of merchants from their nearby locations. The discovery engine selects and brings forth deals and merchandise of local vendors, spread across all categories for an easy purchase experience.
Shopclues claims, that it will be providing customer with best prices, along with faster delivery, speedier complaint resolution and quicker return protocol. The company is hoping to a reduced delivery time of 4 hours with this initiative. Now that could be a huge advantage, if executed of course.
Shopclues says, that it will be implementing this new feature in phases to gradually cover more and more sellers and cities. Customers will see the Neighbourhood Market tab prompt on the home screen along with categories and product lists.
Sanjay Sethi, Co-founder and CEO, ShopClues.com, commented,
Neighbourhood Market will enable local shoppers and sellers to interact for a better overall shopping experience. Many of our users are first-time buyers who are used to shopping from malls or local bazaars. They prefer to have a physical face to their purchases which is now possible with our new property.
ShopClues was founded in 2011 and has over 19 Million listed products with more than 200,000 merchants on board. The company has more than 800 people working for it and has raised $116.3 million in five funding rounds from five investors.
