Out of 30,000 registered merchants / sellers on Flipkart, 90% are small businesses. In order to assist them and help them grow, Flipkart has launched a support and consultancy platform called Flipkart One Stop or F1 Stop.
Flipkart One Stop will basically prove these services for small business owners and online sellers:
- – Registration of Flipkart’s platform
- – Basic training regarding online business
- – Training on how to catalogue products
- – Assistance in packaging and shipping
- – Financial assistance if needed, under certain terms and conditions
- – Agencies such as Browntape, Sellerworx, 99yrs.com, BluBox and Chikiweb have been roped in to provide digital marketing and ecommerce consultancy services for sellers and merchants on their platform
Ankit Nagori, chief business officer at Flipkart said, “This new initiative will help them streamline and simplify the processes to get their businesses up and running online within a short span of time,”
Flipkart One Stop has been successfully rolled out across 10 Indian cities as of now, which include Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Surat and Jaipur.
By the time 2015 ends, 20 such service & consultancy centers would be spread across the country in 20 different cities. Flipkart has planned to open one service center across each city.
Flipkart is aiming to increase their registered sellers from 30,000 to 1 lakh by the end of 2015; and F1 Stop can be a major catalyst in this endeavor.
Seller Assistance Programs: What Others Are Doing?
If we talk about an online market place model, then sellers and merchants become the most important entity after technology. Major ecommerce portals which are working on market place model are definitely aware of this, and almost all of them have some sort of special sellers assistance program running right now.
– Last year, Snapdeal started an special program called ‘LaunchPad’, wherein sellers are being provided assistance related with inventory management, marketing and finances.
– Amazon tied up with SBI to develop special payments platform and for providing financial assistance to their sellers
– Amazon is also providing loans to their sellers via their in-house credit platform called ‘Amazon Lending’
– Additionally, Amazon India’s huge campus in Hyderabad will train SMEs and entrepreneurs from nearby districts for better growth in ecommerce
– Alibaba and ICICI Bank decided to assist small businesses via special loans
– Ebay enabled their sellers to take collateral free loans upto Rs 1 crore from Capital Floats
– In June this year, Flipkart had signed MoU with Federation of Indian Micro and Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME) and National Center for Design and Product Development (NCDPD) to bring in more creative entrepreneurs into ecommerce, and providing them with financial assistance
In case you are using any of these sellers assistance program from any ecommerce portal, do share your experience with us.
BrownTape is total waste, bunch of unprofessional people