Small marketplace models earn big around festive season

While Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal received a tremendous response during the festive sale days, small marketplace models like ShopClues and Paytm also got a tremendous response to products. Though Flipkart’s shipments witnessed a growth of 3 million more orders compared to its usual 5 million shipments a month, ShopClues saw orders peaking to about 1,30,000 per month in September and October from about 75,000 per month during the rest of the year.

Interestingly, around 70 percent of ShopClues' orders come from Tier II, III cities. So according to the company, it connects more with the local tastes of the consumers unlike big portals that act like malls. Paytm, another two-and-a-half-year-old Noida-based start-up began operations as a portal offering mobile recharging and facilitating utility bill payments. But when it realized that the customers had spare cash in their online wallets, which it calls Paytm Cash from Rs 400 to Rs 700, platform began selling products like jeans, T-shirts and USBs. What’s more, around the festival of Diwali, it also introduced local sweets, lights and some traditional festive clothing like ghagra cholis .Today the portal has 20 million registered users and 6 lakh orders a day.

Furniture e-tailer Pepperfry that unveiled its first TVC in late September to coincide with the festive season also saw positive response from customers. Even lingerie portal Zivame had good response to its product range, though their peak selling season is around Valentines Day in February. Experts feel that one of the reasons why most of the e-retailers were able to do well around the festive season was because of the investments of big players in consumer awareness and advertising.