New age sellers vs traditional sellers
In the book “Clash of Civilisations and the remaking of the world order” Samuel P Huntington wrote
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
The Indian retail space is rallying for a similar clash. Except instead of organised violence, it is the superiority in applying venture capital from abroad.
Taxi space. Mobile retailing space where a mobile phone giant had to stop official sales to online stores because the general trade boycotted them. The recent Chemists strike.
The online vs offline battle is set to escalate very rapidly remaking industries as we go, as the benefits of cheap connectivity is rapidly spreading through the country.
While new age entrepreneurs are attempting to build such digital marketplaces across the country, the offline marketplaces are pretty much left bereft of any advantages of technology at a large scale. Traditional technology interventions have been clunky, expensive and take so much time to deploy and manage, that the world has already moved on to something else by the time you have fully realised the benefits of that deployment.
Enter 2SD
Short for 2 Streets Down, a literal translation of “do gali baju mein”. 2SD has created a transaction platform that allows sellers (any kind, grocers, chemists, restaurants et al) to take their store online in 3 minutes flat. It takes away the pain of inventory keeping, price management etc.
2SD aims to empower the local seller to be able to address his customers changing behaviour, by taking orders on an app. Giving him complete flexibility on pricing and inventory management.
Embrace Uncertainity
2SD embraces that uncertainty and seeks to manage it rather than try (and fail) to eliminate it altogether. And thus move away from the western model of retailing and enables the Indian model of retailing where inventory management is as simple as “start and stop”. Pricing is managed on the fly.
Cutting Edge learning algos
Apart from the 3 minute on-boarding, the platform is self learning. It trains itself as to the items the customers are looking for and also learns from the seller behaviour as to availability and pricing.
2SD has been in the market for a few days and has already onboarded 20 sellers with a daily transaction number at about 20. Sellers have taken to the service and are actively promoting it in their customer base.
Help us succeed
We need some early testers and evangelists who are willing to try out our product and give us feedback. In return we promise you some goodies.
To give you a sense of how easy it is. Please have a look at this short video.
App in the mobile browser
https://www.2sd.in/user/
What we need from you:
- You should be living in Noida, Delhi or Gurgaon
- You should be willing to order from your local seller on an app/mobile website
- You should be willing to give us feedback
We will onboard sellers whereever we have an enthusiastic participant.
Current clusters of sellers where we are already active
Gurgaon
- DLF Phase V (Wellington, Princeton, Club Drive et al)
- Valley View
Noida
- Sector 28, 29,34, 44, 78, 93
Delhi
- Paschim Vihar
If you think you could spare some time to experience a new way to do your daily small ticket needs please drop me a line: chirag at 2sd dot in or catch me on Twitter @chirag
asha chaudhry
hey chirag,
do you have a website or are you app only?
if you do have a website pls link it the first time you mention 2SD (love the name!)
it would be nice if you added some subheads to your post – would make reading it a lot easier!!
asha chaudhry
ps: what’s the 3 min funda?! 🙂
Chirag Patnaik
So, the three minute funda is that the seller takes roughly 3 minutes to go online. As compared to all other marketplaces,
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
confused – this is a trade app for merchants?
Chirag Patnaik
Yes and a shopping app for buyers.
I think we need to refine our pitch a little better.
Sridhar Rajendran
Hi Chirag,
I had a look at your website. To summarize, 2SD is like an ‘eBay for kirana shops’?
Do the shop owners pay to get listed on your service?
Chirag Patnaik
EBay is a good analogy. Right now it’s all free. But yes,, the plan is to get them to pay.