ShopClues aims at faster profitability

Online marketplace ShopClues is on track to be profitable by the third quarter of 2017. Since November 9 back end costs have gone down, as there has been a drop in cash on delivery. The bottom line continues to grow and the impact on the top line is not going to be more than five per cent.

The company is also planning to enter the hyper local sector and is looking at local offline merchants, grocers, mom and pop stores to increase reach, particularly grocers, because grocery involves repeat purchases by the consumer. The merchant route would be taken. At present the company has around 5,00,000 merchants and it wants to double it in 18 months to 10,0000.

ShopClues has launched an SMS-based payment service Reach for merchants after the demonetisation drive to help facilitate cashless transactions at a monthly subscription fee of Rs 99. Reach will help merchants who are looking for growth by enabling them go for hassle-free cashless transaction in three steps. Using this platform, merchants will feed the transaction amount and the mobile number of the customer. After this, the customer will receive an SMS with a link of payment where he can pay using net banking or mobile wallet.