How Urvann Built India’s #1st Plants’ Hyperlocal Marketplace With StoreHippo

Challenge- Transforming A Traditionally Offline Industry Into A Digital-Native Hyperlocal Business Model

To bring the unique plants marketplace Urvann to life, the foremost challenge was onboarding hundreds of offline nurseries and gardening products manufacturers and helping them become comfortable with digital selling. Urvann was already using Shopify, but it lacked the necessary tools to manage a marketplace ecosystem of this scale and efficiently support first-time digital sellers. Urvann needed a feature-rich yet easy to use Shopify alternative to manage their business and vendors online.

Since Urvann was planning a nationwide presence, it also required a location-wise multi-store setup with unique inventory for each location. To efficiently route their orders for next-day delivery across nine states in India, Urvann needed a central control to manage diverse sellers and their inventories, coordinate logistics and streamline order fulfillment for faster, more reliable deliveries.

Additionally, Urvann needed unique layouts and theme designs to represent their brand offerings, ethos, and ensure a seamless user experience with customized features across their hyperlocal marketplace website. 

Lastly, Urvann wanted to have a smooth migration from their existing platform, Shopify, to avoid any disruptions to their ongoing operations and ensure continuity for their customers and sellers. They required a comprehensive and scalable ecommerce solution that could support their ambitious growth plans and adapt to their evolving business needs.

Urvann aimed to create a first of its kind hyperlocal marketplace ecosystem that made purchasing plants and gardening products seamless for customers, while providing nursery owners with a direct, digital sales channel. By focusing on fast, healthy deliveries and localized inventory management, Urvann sought to streamline fulfillment and introduce operational efficiencies across its multi-location model. This innovative business approach required the right technology to bring their vision to life.

Urvann needed a feature-rich, flexible and user-friendly enterprise ecommerce platform capable of handling the complexities of a large hyperlocal marketplace. They were looking for an all-in-one ecommerce solution that minimized reliance on multiple apps or extensions, enabled quick customizations, digitised core processes and offered scalability to support their ambitious growth plans.

A Green Mission Rooted In Innovation- StoreHippo's Hyperlocal Marketplace Solutions for Urvann’s Growth

StoreHippo’s multi vendor marketplace platform had the end-to-end features, tools and solutions to help Urvann build a hyperlocal marketplace and a network of location based sub stores for its unique requirements.  

StoreHippo’s headless ecommerce platform, plug-and-play solutions and dedicated Shopify Channel Migration feature could easily address all of Urvann’s needs. 

Here is what Urvann was able to achieve with StoreHippo:

Hyperlocal Online Marketplace

Urvann uses StoreHippo’s built-in multi vendor ecommerce solutions in combination with the hyperlocal ecommerce solutions to build a marketplace with quick, streamlined and efficient deliveries. Storehippo built-in multi vendor management solutions made it easy for Urvann to manage their vendor nurseries and gardening products manufacturers across diverse locations. The smooth and automated order flow processes made it easy for Urvann’s local vendors to timely and efficiently deliver green plants to their buyers. 

Location-Based Sub-Stores

To reach markets across nine states in India and keep tapping new locations, Urvann used StoreHippo’s proprietary Multistore® ecommerce solutions and built a network of location based sub-stores with unique inventory, pricing and offers. Each local vendor got a separate dashboard with intuitive and easy to use features for managing their end-to-end business. 

Central Dashboard 

To manage such a widespread business with many first time digital channel users as vendors, Urvann needed a central control with visibility of all vendor activities, order and shipping. With StoreHippo central dashboard to manage multiple stores and vendors, Urvann management has a comprehensive overview of business, inventories and order deliveries across all sub-stores.

Extensive Customisations and Scalability

Urvann’s novel business model needed an enterprise eCommerce platform that could be easily customized not only at the frontend but also at the backend to accommodate the brand’s needs

for a streamlined, engaging, and efficient user experience, while ensuring smooth operations for both sellers and buyers in their hyperlocal marketplace. 

Urvann leveraged StoreHippo’s MACH ( Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) architecture and quick customization capabilities to implement multi level customizations for theme, order details section, reviews on product grids and unique sorting by bestseller. These tweaks enabled Urvann to build a hyperlocal marketplace  that offers a more engaging and personalized customer experience, while streamlining backend operations for enhanced efficiency and scalability.

Hassle-Free Migration From Shopify

Urvann first started on Shopify, but the app-based infrastructure and constant app syncing created inefficiencies, slowing down operations and making it difficult to scale. To overcome these limitations, Urvann sought a more streamlined, integrated Shopify alternative StoreHippo that could handle its growing marketplace needs without relying heavily on multiple apps or extensions.

StoreHippo offered a seamless migration from Shopify along with plug-and-play solutions, easy customisations and unparalleled scalability for Urvann’s unique business.

Automated Process For Bulk Updates

Urvann needed an automated solution to streamline the management of thousands of daily orders. With StoreHippo’s bulk CSV export and import feature, Urvann’s admin team could easily export and update orders in bulk, allowing for quick modifications to order statuses and seamless re-import into the system. By eliminating the need for manual, one-by-one updates, this solution significantly reduced time and effort, ensuring a more efficient workflow for processing over 2,000 orders daily.

Making Homes Greener With Plants and Gardening Material Delivered Daily Across 16000+ PIN Codes

With StoreHippo powering its hyperlocal marketplace, Urvann got a next-gen solution to support its ambitious plans of scaling its plants and gardening products marketplace to new heights.

StoreHippo successfully provided Urvann with a comprehensive eCommerce solution for running a successful marketplace with a strong hyperlocal presence across 9 states. By offering the Urvann team clear visibility, automated processes and easy-to-use solutions for all parties involved, StoreHippo streamlined operations and enhanced efficiency, enabling seamless management of their growing business. Urvann is disrupting the hyperlocal ecommerce space with its unique business model and StoreHippo is honored to be a part of its valued patron’s success journey.