Shop Clues gives small businesses a hand

Shop Clues has launched an initiative called Saarthi, which works toward the development of small and medium enterprises in India. The program endeavors to digitise and empower lakhs of small and medium enterprises and bring them into the economic mainstream of the country as they are the prime driver in India’s economic growth. More than five lakh enterprises have already been brought under its fold.

Shop Clues is an online marketplace. Some 50 weavers in Varanasi were registered with the digital skilling desktop program and given training on online selling. About 50 per cent of Shop Clues’ orders come from Tier III and IV markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in south India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.

While on the demand side Shop Clues services Tier III and Tier IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling unbranded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80 per cent of its sellers are small and medium enterprises. The company ships about 1.2 million fashion products a month and the category has already grown to account for 50 per cent of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value and about 65 per cent of net revenue.