Hi All
Last week I meet Alok Bhai and discussed a lot of things in which one was a platform to get live quotations from near by shops.
Our idea is about removing all the hassles related to calling store and visiting them for price research before buy a product.
Even thought we (me & Alok ) agreed to disagree on many aspects of the concept, he suggested I make a presentation on it and put it on therodinhoods for suggestion & bashing from our member and to understand if the need really exists.
Here goes the presentation.
Do pour in your suggestions and bash us for all our pitfalls.
P.S.: As both me and my co-founder are non technical souls, we are looking to build a tech team in Ahmadabad and thus are looking for developers- a team lead/ CTO/ project manager/technical cofounder .
Please connect us with the right people. It would help us save money which we intent to spend on consultants & head hunters and also reduce the frequency of us getting fooled. ( we are expecting to get fooled being rookie in technology and getting fooled probably is one of the best method to learn/enter a new avenue of business. )
Pawan Deokule
Hi Ankit,
The differentiator is missing. What is the compelling reason a potential advertiser/dealer would choose your platform vs ebay, justdial, pricebaba, naaptol, etc.?
What is the compelling reason for a user to keep coming back to your website?
If you are running into a highly competitive market there has to be a clearly disruptive method that would mark you as the leader of the pack else scaling would be impossible unless the market size itself increases.
Neharika Roy
I liked the idea. M-Commerce will be the next wave of shopping and this is definitely approaching the right direction. Here are some of my doubts though:
1. Does a retailer get to see what the other retailers are quoting? This would be a reverse-auction kind of thing where the person willing to sell at the lowest price/margin wins.
2. How do you filter out the retailers who give lower quotes than they are actually willing to sell an item for? A retailer can simply send in a query to find out what his competitors are charging for a product. On the other hand, is there a time-frame withing which answers from the retailer are accepted (10 mins/ 1 hr)? The retailer would probably need to have someone just for this purpose- to reply to the smses (if they miss the window, they could potentially lose a sale). Would they want to do that?
3. You would need to have some sort of method so that the user can see only the top 5-10 results. (Too many options can be very annoying or overwhelming) Maybe the user can select the stores from which he/she wants quotes.
4. Most local retailers would not want to sign-up for a subscription fee. A % on sales basis may be a better idea to get them to try it out first.
5. This is my major doubt: Very often, when a person wants to buy a phone or TV or a camera, they have a few specifications in mind, but they have not decided on a particular make or model. The reason they go to the store/ check online is to get a detailed idea of all the specifications and then choose one that fits the price-criteria bracket. Could you provide some service that will help them to do that?
With some fine-tuning, you’ll probably have a great product!
Manish Golchha
Checkout http://www.agentsbids.com
ankit.dudhwewala
Thanks Manish for the link. This probably is what we aim to build but for products. Also we don’t want to get in the bidding mechanism. We want to be an instant communication platform with nearby vendors.
ankit.dudhwewala
Hi Neharika
Thanks for taking interest.
1. This is kind of a reverse auction but we are not going in for a reverse auction method as that will dissuade vendors from joining in.
2. We filter retailers who give lower quotes by user review, user marking them as spam and vendor rating. It’s the same way people tend to chose between different vendors on eBay and may be end up paying rs 100 more for a better rated vendor.
There is no time frame at this point. We may introduce it after testing the product in the real world. We have a method where the user can himself close the window once his requirement has been full filled.
3. We wouldn’t have the system of top 5-10 quotes in the initial model. Hope you understand that getting 5 quotes in the specific locality will also be a challenge.
4. We will not be charging any fee until will have a platform worthy of charging subscription fee I.e. we will ask for subscription fee only after we have enough buyer and sellers on the platform. The % method will be very complex and hence will be avoided.
5. To start with, we come in after the person has decided of the product. Now our focus is to become a instant communication tool between consumers and nearby retailers.
However, at a later stage we do plan to add features like the one you are asking for.
ankit.dudhwewala
Hi Pawan
Thanks for the specific questions.
EBay, naptool don’t help in searching local vendors.
Pricebaba is into listing of mobile phone prices after doing their research. We are a platform for buyers & sellers to communicate with each other in any product they want.
Something which will get the difference easily out is – none of the platform helps me buy a TV, Fridge, Desktop etc. though this is not the only targeted market us. But hope is explains better.
Justdial is providing quotes but we are like the whatsapp amongst the BBM and gtalk messenger. We are simplifying the process.
Who doesn’t like saving money while buying a laptop or a mobile phone etc or a desktop. That probably is the only reason people will come back to us.
Nikunj Bubna
Ankit,
You are assuming that sales is a pure left-brain transaction conducted mechanically between a consumer & a robot. Dude, I doubt whether large retail chains would be interested in your model so if you’re going to target the neighborhood stores, please understand that the thing they hate the most is a customer who comes, just asks for the price of a specific product, wastes time & doesn’t make a sale. They in fact want to cultivate a relationship, massage ego, sell it to the customer at a slight premium & still make the customer feel as if she’s got a rocking deal. Your app takes away that basic personal element when it comes to mom & pop stores. Reverse auction as a process may work fine in e-commerce though
ankit.dudhwewala
Initially, we don’t expect large retail chain to be interested in this. But we expect employees of large retail chain to create accounts and respond. (after all even they have incentives and targets)
The scenario is different. Here, there is no waste time with the customer. They just have to quote their price. Hence the hassles are reduced.
Nikunj Bubna
Having done business with large retail chains, I can tell you that mostly they have guidelines which stipulate limit below which their sales people are not allowed to go and those guys would be wary of at least posting very low prices on a reverse auction type platform which can be misused by their competition, without any guarantee of sales closure. So, I would say with confidence that your offline model is by-default for the standalone local stores.
And please read the Indian consumer well: he doesn’t mind the hassles if that assures him that that’s the way he would get a great deal. Believe me, once you get into real world testing you would probably realize how tough it would be for you to earn consumers’ blind trust that the price discovered on your app is indeed the lowest they can get each time without any effort on their part.
Tuffel Ahmed
Hi Ankit,
Nice idea but I think there will be few challenges like
1) How will a user rate or review the retailer on this app. What I understand from the above presentation is that there will be no retailer or supplier listing on this app.
2) How will you use this app or medium for other categories like clothing, footwear, furniture, other non standard or unbranded products.
3) With your model I dont know how long does the customer have to wait to get called back. What if the customer does not get call from any single retailer. With business models like milo.com or pricebaba.com instead of waiting for a call from the retailer, customers can easily browse the price online locally.
Instead of amplifying the buying process you should try to reduce and save customers time, making shopping easier for them.
ankit.dudhwewala
1. The retailer/ supplier will have to create a user ID/profile to become a member. This will be used for rating.
2. We intend to use it only for standard products.
3. The challenge is to get enough retailers so that the customer doesn’t have to wait.
Jitendra Gursingh
Hi Ankit,
To begin with, I would never shout out to the world what I want only because of the fear of being continuously pestered by telemarketers. It is also an unnatural thing for a shopper to do that, because he always wishes to keep the freedom to change his mind anytime. By declaring his exact want, he is actually allowing the seller to control him.
Nevertheless, I go and put up what I want on locobazaar. You would have to have a team that gets the retailers to be quick & respond to that. Doing that for ‘Any’ product would be very difficult & I would suggest you to narrow down to specific categories initially. A minimum guaranteed no of responses could be a great promise for a new customer to sign up.
Your idea seems to be a marriage of Wishberg & price comparisons from local retailers. Also, if you restrict this to standard branded products, what is the need to buy offline? A standard brand product is easier sold online & online price comparison sites are mushrooming by the day.
Anyways, wish you best for your idea. IMHO it needs more work ok the execution 🙂
ankit.dudhwewala
HI Jitendra
It is not compulsory to purchase after sending out a request and the users number will not be disclosed. One get the message in whatsapp form which one can read at your leisure or one can chose to ignore. One can also close his requirement at any point in time, hence the shops will not be able to disturb him.
Yes we need a marketing plan and a good strategy. We have it ready with us and shall be modifying as and when.
We are not combination of this and that. Calling it a combination of wishberg , price comparison and local retailers makes it sound very complex and not doable. Lets keep it simple and call it a instant communication platform with near by vendors.
Hope, you understand that tata chroma, vijay sales, sales india, reliance retail, mobile store, spice store, and 10000 (may be more) other individual run store make profits in Mumbai selling standard products offline. As standard as a Samsung Galaxy 4 & as standard as a bravia tv (which no online platform sells)
Anoop SathyaMurthy
Hi Ankit,
This is more of a globe sourcing kinds where the buyer meets the supplier.
I have few doubts.
1. Any standard branded products or happening product which is a hit is always operated by a MOP market operated price which are mostly controlled by the brand owners.
2. Why will the retailer respond? If the order size is small. The retailer would definitely be interested if it is a huge volume. Avg indian e commerce transaction size is within 5k as per ebay census. I am sorry do not know the exact.
3. Buying from near by shops is again a consumer perception. No matter how good the products are nearby some consumers buy from the shopping zones in a city to get that WOW factor.
Anoop SathyaMurthy
Croma retail online sells bravia along with lot other ecom companies. They sell both thw product you have mentioned.
Why would large retailers like croma or the mobile store come to the platform like locobazar? What is the edge that they get?