With Shop101, Glance and Roposo will have access to a market-leading e-commerce technology platform, a comprehensive supply chain infrastructure and the talent base required to build the celebrity and influencer driven commerce platform. This will also immensely benefit Shop101’s suppliers who can leverage Glance’s over 125 million daily active users to grow their businesses, the companies said in a joint press release.

“As leaders in the mobile content space, both Glance and Roposo are disrupting the way users create, discover and consume content, making them the preferred platforms for top celebrities and creators to connect with their audience. With the addition of Shop101, we aim to make these platforms the top shopping destinations for millions of users as well,” said Piyush Shah, co-founder, InMobi Group, and president & COO, Glance. “With Shop101’s technology, partners and hugely talented team, we are in a great position to create this new form of mobile commerce at a global scale.”

Shop101, founded by Abhinav Jain, Aditya Gupta and Kalpak Chhajed in 2015, is a full stack e-commerce company that brings a network of 10 million resellers and 10,000 supplier partners together serving customers across over 2,000 towns across the country. The company which employs around 300 professionals is backed by Vy Capital, Stellaris Venture Partners, Unilever Ventures and Kalaari Capital.

“We had started Shop101 as a social e-commerce platform with a vision to democratise entrepreneurship and commerce for the masses using a technology-first approach. With Glance and Roposo, Shop101 will now be part of a company that shares our goal of transforming the shopping experience for millions of consumers globally,” said Abhinav Jain, founder & CEO of Shop101.

Celebrity and influencer-led live commerce is touted as the future of e-commerce globally as shoppers look for the next level of buying experience. This new form of interactive and influencer-driven commerce integrates recommendation tool, community and entertainment to bring in delightful elements of discovery to the overall shopping experience. It also looks at replicating the fun of physical shopping on digital platforms, enabling shoppers to interact with the brand endorsers and order products in real time.

This model has seen huge success in China accounting for over 20 per cent of the total e-commerce sales. Even though it is still in an early phase in India now, the total addressable market for live and interactive commerce in the country is expected to surpass $40 billion by 2025. According to a recent report by leading management and strategy consulting firm Zinnov, Glance has the potential to be among India’s largest video-first, live, social, and interactive commerce platforms.

Within two years of its inception, Glance which is backed by Google and Mithril Capital has emerged as one of the top-10 global consumer platforms. Similarly, Roposo which has seen over 100 million downloads is used by close to 1.2 million content creators.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KD)