Snapdeal to introduce online stores

After a successful stint on the e-commerce platform, Snapdeal.com is vying to offer more

to its customers by launching online stores. After the e-platform announced its foray into ‘brand stores’ concept, it now plans to introduce thousands of local retailers online, who couldn’t reach out to the growing number of consumers buying online. Each store would have a login and a password for managing the assortment.

By introducing these online stores, Snapdeal would earn a revenue share from each of them. The revenue share would depend on the category of products and could be anywhere between five to 50 per cent of the sales value of products. While sale of lifestyle products would mean a higher revenue share, that of electronics, with a lower margin, would mean a lower revenue share for Snapdeal.

Initially, Snapdeal would offer about 3,000 odd stores — from local to national and international ones. The company plans to have 10,000 brand stores by the end of 2013 and 20,000 by December 2014. The experience of shopping here would be quite like that at a retail chain. The company says at least 2,500 brands are waiting to set up stores. The company aims to record revenue of Rs 500 crores by the year-end and increase this to $1 billion (Rs 5,500 crores) by 2015.

Apart from introducing the multi-store concept, the company is also broadening its 200-category strong product portfolio by adding books to its category with over 10 million titles in two-three months.