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That’s How I Want To Build My E-Commerce Company !

Yes! I am a Co-founder at bluegape.com. I am one of those champs who prefers to order it online whenever my MOM asks me to bring some vegetables from the market. I am a passionate follower of most of the e-commerce companies of India. I have tweeted/retweeted almost every funding/acquisition news of the e-commerce industry. I can tell you the name of CEOs of all the e-commerce companies. Sometimes I feel I know Sachin of Flipkart, Mukesh of Myntra, Kunal of Snapdeal as if they all are my classmates. May be that’s the reason I started bluegape.com last year. We have a good traction, profits and everything. But there is something that made me bit skeptical about the success of e-commerce industry. Let me start here :

Everyday few new emails pop up into my account asking to put bluegape discount coupons on their website. We have put our coupons on most of the mobile recharge sites and some other deal sites. Guess what, we got a good amount of traction from them. But I was always curious to see what can excite people about bluegape and it’s products apart from giving away discounts coupons. For me It was more important to understand what is that actually excites a customer about most of the e-commerce companies. A quick google search gave me this result :

infibeam

And the results were very astonishing for me. It’s always the word discount coupon that follows after the company’s name. Is this due to customers who have changed their perspective for the e-commerce companies or Is it e-commerce companies who are in the league to lure their customers with fancy discount coupons. Whatever be the case is, but I am sure this psychology will ruin the e-commerce industry in India soon. Then I took a deep breathe and did the same exercise for Amazon and here’s the result :

People search Amazon for it’s products and not because of coupon codes. They love Amazon for what it delivers.

Now may be all these e-commerce companies can call it customer acquisition cost as they have million dollars in their bank account from their VCs and I don’t. But even if I will raise million dollars as I want to build a company where people will know bluegape because of it’s product, value and services, not because of discount codes. I want  people to actually understand the need of my company in their life.

Okay, I am getting out of this league of discount game. Let me have a beer tonight and start the same journey with new approach.

P.S. : Give me a shout on twitter @sbaghla and say best of luck with #bluegape :-)

Originally posted at bluegape blog here !

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  1. Really good analysis. I can share one of the examples which might help you to get rid of your doubts. My marketing professor was working with famous apparel brand as store manager.

    One day Kokilaben Ambani entered the store to buy some stuff. When the time came for payment, Kokilaben said “isme kuch kam karo” (i.e looking for bargain in India)

    The lesson I learnt from this is , its in our demographics. Discount is in our blood.

    All the best bro!!!

  2. Vishal, the one word to describe this post is SUPERB.. Honest, Crisp & Neat.. 🙂

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