8 Challenges of Building an Enterprise Marketplace in India

Planning to embark on a journey to build an enterprise marketplace in India?

Well, kudos, it is a bold endeavor!

However, every step you take towards your goals unveils both obstacles and avenues for growth. 

The path to success in the digital world is laden with challenges. Negotiating these challenges requires meticulous planning and careful execution. 

How you regulate through the challenges and build an enterprise marketplace website in India can pave the way to triumph.

Strap-in as we explore the challenges of building the best multi vendor marketplace in India, and offer solutions to negotiate these challenges. 

Enterprise Marketplace in India: Industry Trends to Navigate Ecommerce Challenges

The booming Indian digital market landscape offers humongous growth opportunities for enterprise brands. All they need is a keen eye to tap into hidden opportunities and find ways to address multifaceted challenges. 

Wonder what could be your guiding light?

The industry trends. Since trends reflect the ever-evolving needs and aspirations of buyers and sellers, enterprise marketplace in India can stay ahead of the latest ecommerce shifts and 

Here is a sneak peek at some of the Indian ecommerce industry trends: 

• $ 350 billion is the estimated worth of the Indian ecommerce industry by 2030
• 64.7% growth in order volume in tier 3 cities in 2022 
• $ 1 trillion is the estimated reach of India’s internet economy by 2030
• $150 billion will be spent by online shoppers in India by 2025
• $100 billion is the predicted D2C market size in India by 2025
• 425 million is the predicted number of online shoppers in India by 2027

Source: Statista, Times of India

The growth of ecommerce can be attributed to increased smartphone penetration and improved logistics. However, given the sheer size and diversity of the demographic, reaching markets, keeping customers happy and building a name for your enterprise marketplaces in India can pose some formidable challenges.                                                                                                                                                      

8 Challenges of Building an Enterprise Marketplace in India

We bring to you a detailed guide, to help you overcome the challenges while building your multi vendor marketplace in India. 

Here is a list of the top 8 challenges and tips to overcome them:

1. Finding the Right Enterprise Ecommerce Platform in India

Given the current market scenario, you need a robust enterprise platform to remain agile and customer-centric. It can be challenging to find the right ecommerce platform in India that helps you keep up with the rapid evolution of technology and adapt to the market dynamics. 

Enterprise-scale businesses that plan to explore the vast Indian markets need tailored solutions that can be quickly molded to the needs of diverse audiences. It could be a daunting task to evaluate and find the best solution to build your marketplace on. The best way forward would be to choose a turnkey ecommerce platform tailor-made for the Indian markets that offers 360-degree solutions to build, run, and grow your enterprise business.                  

StoreHippo is a made-in-India enterprise ecommerce solution that is designed to handle the unique requirements of Indian brands. Built on MACH architecture, StoreHippo, the best multi-vendor platform, provides ecommerce brands with inherent flexibility and unmatched scalability to sell their products on multiple touchpoints. 

You can seamlessly tweak the ecommerce platform inside out without disrupting the entire ecosystem. With StoreHippo, you can build disruptive solutions by offering consistently high-performance sites even when your business grows exponentially. StoreHippo ecommerce solutions are designed and well-equipped to handle the complex needs of B2B, B2C, B2B2C, or any other hybrid business models for the Indian market. 

2. Catering to Customers and Vendors from Diverse Regions 

To build an enterprise marketplace in India that attracts customers from different regions, you need to offer a wide range of products. And for this you will have to onboard diverse vendors from different industries or geolocations. 

Indian customers love to shop in their native language. And as you plan to cater to customers from diverse regions, you need to offer a seamless shopping experience with a local touch. What could be better than engaging with your customers in their native language? Wonder how to go about it?        

Well, first you need the right set of tools and features that make it easy to onboard and manage vendors from diverse locations. Then to keep a constant flow of orders coming in on your marketplace, you need to build an enterprise marketplace website that helps you with the seamless vendor registration process, engage with your customers in their native language, and manage your vendors efficiently. Also, each of your vendors need to be given a feature-rich, easy to use dashboard that helps them in managing their end to end business easily and  efficiently.

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions come with a built-in vendor management solution that makes it easy for you to onboard multiple vendors and manage them seamlessly on your enterprise marketplace. StoreHippo offers a separate vendor dashboard to each of the sellers to help them manage their products, orders, inventory, returns, refunds, etc. StoreHippo also creates a unique seller page for each of your vendors and helps them get undivided customer attention. A unique seller page on your enterprise marketplace in India will also help your customers reach their sellers for repurchases. StoreHippo comes with support for 100+ different languages including RTL (Right to Left) languages like Urdu. With the easy-to-use multilingual solutions, you can easily translate your website into multiple languages and engage with your audience in their native language.

3. Building an Omnichannel Presence

For enterprise brands like yours, creating a consistent brand image on multiple sales channels becomes a must. And among the multiple sales channels, mobiles have taken the front seat. Indian customers today expect their brands to offer a seamless mobile shopping experience. 

As you build an enterprise marketplace website for your Indian customers, curate an omnichannel strategy that can boost engagement and conversion rates. Sounds challenging? Well, building an omnichannel presence in the Indian ecommerce market can be challenging if you do not have the right ecommerce platform. You need a solution that is not only suitable for the Indian markets but also helps you create a consistent user experience across all platforms.

StoreHippo ecommerce marketplace website builder comes with a comprehensive omnichannel solution that helps you create new touchpoints using the same backend logic and APIs. With StoreHippo, you can also centrally control all the sales channels and use a central dashboard to manage your enterprise marketplace in India. StoreHippo is built on a mobile-first technology that comes with a built-in mobile app builder. You can create Android or iOS mobile apps right from your admin dashboard at zero additional costs with StoreHippo. You can also create PWA stores that look, feel, and work like mobile apps even on entry-level devices and help you reach tier III and beyond buyers where internet connectivity is not very good. StoreHippo also offers mobile solutions to help admin, delivery boys and vendors manage their business on the go.    

4. Creating a Consistent Personalized Brand Image 

When customers interact with their brand on multiple channels, they expect a consistent user experience that is personalized to their persona. Yes, with 80% of the customers willing to share their personal data for a personalized buyer journey, it's time to build an enterprise marketplace website in India that is personalized to its core. It can however be challenging to cater to the audience across India and keep them hinged to your enterprise marketplace while also aligning a consistent brand experience across all channels. 

StoreHippo ecommerce website builder is built on a decoupled headless architecture that helps you implement multi-level personalization on your marketplace. You can cater to multiple segments of your buyers based on different factors like locations, products, audiences, etc.

You can also maintain consistency across all channels with StoreHippo’s built-in design themes library. The best multi vendor platform, StoreHippo helps enterprise brands create a well-crafted, engaging, and conversion-oriented brand image with its 100+ device-optimized themes to connect with customers from all parts of India. You can also create a personalized and frictionless payment process by choosing from 60+ pre-integrated domestic and international payment gateways. 

5. Adapting to Dynamic Market Changes 

The Indian ecommerce market is driven by evolving buyer habits. How you cope with the changing market dynamics is the challenge here. With the rapid evolution of technology and the advancements in ecommerce platforms in India, you need robust solutions that offer agility, flexibility, and adaptability to stay ahead of the curve.     

The decoupled headless architecture from StoreHippo helps enterprise brands in India create out-of-box solutions with better creative control and flexibility. StoreHippo platform also offers a powerful built-in discount engine that helps enterprise brands offer multi-level discounts on your marketplace. The discounts can be personalized to the unique needs of the audience and with StoreHippo, the best multi vendor platform, you can also send out PUSH notifications to your target audience. You can also recover abandoned carts and customize the shipping, logistics, or payment methods to the convenience of your buyers from diverse regions of India. StoreHippo offers peak-load tolerance and 99.99% uptime even when you scale to millions of users or products. With the future-proof solutions from StoreHippo you need not worry about replatforming in future. 

6. Offering Multi-Channel Support to Customers 

Customers appreciate being able to interact with their favorite brands across multiple channels for any inconvenience they encounter. Your enterprise marketplace in India can become your buyers’ favorite if it can ensure customer satisfaction by offering multi-channel support. 

Listening to customer grievances and resolving them in a quick time can boost your ticket value manifold. The new-age Indian buyers are more inclined towards brands that offer quick customer support and stay atop of their customers’ needs. It can however be challenging to create multi-channel support, aligned with a self-service business model that also offers self-exploration to the Indian customers.

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions help you overcome the challenge of offering a multi-channel support to your customers. You can seamlessly connect to your customers on your enterprise marketplace in India through automated tools and features like abandoned cart follow-up, SMS, push and email notifications, social media integrations, live chat, chatbot, etc. You can also choose to integrate with your favourite customer servicing software with StoreHippo.               

7. Building a Streamlined Supply Chain 

With more and more Indian shoppers expecting their brands to offer same-day delivery, it has become a challenge for enterprise brands to align their supply chain with buyers’ expectations of fast delivery. Customers are also quick to change brand loyalties for quick deliveries. To retain loyal customers on your enterprise marketplace in India and keep your cash counter ringing, you must build customer trust by offering them a transparent, timely and fast order delivery. Well, quite a challenge indeed given you have to rely on 3PL and pay hefty upfront costs for partnering with the best fulfillment partners.  

StoreHippo enterprise marketplace website builder comes with 30+ pre-integrated logistics solutions to choose from. As you integrate with more than one logistics partner, you can optimize the shipping costs on your marketplace. You can also integrate with multiple delivery partners of your choice with StoreHippo’s seamless integrations. StoreHippo comes with an in-built delivery boy management system that helps streamline and offer safe, error-free order deliveries. You can seamlessly onboard, manage, and track your fleet of delivery boys right from the admin dashboard with the best multi vendor platform StoreHippo.                      

8. Strategising Growth With Marketing and Reporting Tools

A strong marketing strategy can make you your buyers' favorite. To excel in the ecommerce landscape, you must strategize your business growth with data-driven reports and cutting edge marketing solutions. However, it can be a challenge to integrate with the right marketing and reporting tools when you build an enterprise marketplace website. Choosing the right solution provider that comes with a host of marketing tools to help you target the right audience is your solution. 

StoreHippo ecommerce platform comes with comprehensive and easy-to-use marketing tools that help you take your brand to the right audience across the country. With the built-in powerful discount tool from StoreHippo, you can implement multi-level discounts for your marketplace. StoreHippo also comes with a built-in SEO tool that helps you rank your multi vendor marketplace higher on SERPs. You can easily create unique URLs for pages, meta titles, meta descriptions, meta tags, keywords, and more right from the admin dashboard of your enterprise marketplace in India. With the 120+ API endpoints, you can also integrate with the marketing software and tools of your own choice.

Conclusion

Well, it can be challenging to build an enterprise marketplace website and align with the ever changing demands of the Indian ecommerce market. However, if you choose the right enterprise marketplace software, adjusting to the Indian ecommerce market demands can be easy.

With the best multi vendor platform for your enterprise business, you can establish your brand as a market leader. StoreHippo is a 360-degree turnkey ecommerce software provider that offers 300+ enterprise-grade features and 120+ built-in integrations. You can build a next-gen future-proof ecommerce solution for your brand with the SaaS-based ecommerce platform. The inherent scalability from StoreHippo helps you expand your platform to different locations in India, products, languages, etc. 

It’s time to overcome the challenges of your enterprise marketplace in India with StoreHippo. Start your 14-day free trial now and explore the features to build the best multi vendor marketplace in India.