The scorecards of Alibaba’s “Singles’ Day” sale and “Big Billion Days” on popular indian marketplaces (Amazon, Flipkart, SnapDeal) have proven one thing beyond doubt - online shoppers want more options, more product varieties and better services.
Online multi seller marketplaces are here to stay and we need more of them in times to come.
So, why don’t we have more sites like Alibaba, Amazon, Flipkart, SnapDeal in the eCommerce arena?
Why do entrepreneurs still begin with a simple web store despite realizing the obvious advantages of an online marketplace?
If you go by the interviews of Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, it took them 18 months and Rs. 4,00,000 pooled together in 2007 to begin their journey of FlipKart. Fast forward to 2016, using this figure as benchmark, an average entrepreneur needs approximately Rs. 10,00,000 and one and a half years to start a FlipKart like business. It is definitely not easy for a student, housewife or any SMEs working from their garage or home office to pool together this amount or wait so long for taking their idea online.
There is no turnkey solution available to start a multi seller website. Hence, starting a web store seems to be an easier and cheaper alternative for online businesses owners as they have off-the-shelf solutions for it.
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Fast, Affordable and Future Ready Development Cycle = Successful Business
We at StoreHippo, realised this gap and decided to offer every entrepreneur an easy solution and an opportunity to offer the best to their customers. Also, we made it a point that building something big out of e commerce in today’s date and time should not require a five figure budget or years for developing the marketplace.
Statistics reveal that eight out of ten startups close down within a year of launch as they could not scale up their technology and operations to reach out to wider audiences. Going online with a simple website offers only limited choices to customers and they tend to move to online marketplaces which offer wider product range and more competitive pricing.
To offer every online business a level playing field, StoreHippo, developed a full-fledged marketplace functionality that converts any store into a marketplace. Our multi seller feature is simple to implement and can be started on an affordable monthly subscription.
A Well Rounded Solution : Perfect balance of Admin Control and Vendor Freedom
Tested thoroughly in live scenarios for various types of businesses this feature covers end to end business operations of a multi-seller marketplace. On one hand the StoreHippo multi seller functionality, gives the business owner complete control of Admin and on the other hand offers total freedom and transparency to the vendors.
Accounting, analytics, taxes, commissions, payouts, automatic seller API and much more is covered within this feature. It can also be customized to suit B2B and B2C businesses from any industry vertical. StoreHippo marketplace feature is designed for future and offers a dedicated mobile site as a bonus. We have this feature incorporated two years back whereas FlipKart recently added it recently.
Multi-Seller Marketplaces: The Way to Future
To make it big in extremely competitive eCommerce arena online businesses need a futuristic approach. With a custom multi-seller marketplace startups have a better chance at success.
StoreHippo’s multi-seller solution offers comprehensive solutions for vertical marketplaces (selling a single product vertical like Lime Road, First Cry) as well as horizontal marketplaces( Alibaba, Amazon, FlipKart etc). StoreHippo helps the journey of entrepreneurs and allows them to launch their very own versions of Alibaba, FlipKart, Amazon or Snapdeal in a hassle free and affordable way.
*This article was published on Linkedin.
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