ShopClues to bank on cities for growth

06 Apr '16

2 min read

The fight for online market share is getting more intense with e-commerce player ShopClues is looking to expand its seller base and make intra-zonal shipments the norm to speed up deliveries and reduce logistics cost. The move comes at a time when etailers are seeking to fulfil orders faster than their competitors as discounts take a back seat, The Economic Times has reported.

"We are moving towards dividing the country into different cities as opposed to regions for our shipments," said Radhika Aggarwal, Chief Business Officer at ShopClues. "The idea of shipping from within the zone of a customer works perfectly for structured categories. The unstructured category might or might not benefit from this," she said.

The company will work with local courier partners for deliveries within the zone, she said.

Shipping within a zone leads to a cost saving of about 25 per cent, resulting in better margins for the marketplace and prices for the customers. ShopClues had last year introduced the concept of neighbourhood market feature, which is currently in the pilot stage in Gurgaon for four to six hour deliveries.

Aggarwal said ShopClues currently has four lakh sellers on its platform and plans to increase it to 12 lakh sellers by the end of this year.

“This will also improve our regional selections and price range of products, mainly from the tier-2 and 3 markets," she said Aggarwal.
Valued at $1.1 billion in its last round of funding, ShopClues is targeting profitability by mid-2017. (SH)

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