A new trend has come up within the Indian ecommerce market which is redefining the whole landscape: Exclusive online sales of products.
And this business model is not going anywhere soon.
Flipkart, which has pioneered this new business model has announced that they have sold 25 lakh Motorola handsets in the last 9 months. This sales figure boils down to 9216 mobiles per day or 6.4 mobiles per minute. Staggering numbers if we consider the fact that Motorola handsets were sold exclusively on Flipkart.com alone.
Motorola, which re-entered the Indian market in February this year, had chosen an ecommerce only model of selling their handsets, and it seems that the gamble paid off. All their handsets which were subsequently launched: Moto G, the Moto E, the Moto X, the Moto G (2nd gen) and the Moto X (2nd gen) were only sold via Flipkart.
Although Flipkart hasn’t provided us with the breakdown of the sales figure, but based on the buzz, Moto E is being considered as the hottest selling smartphone, followed by Moto G and Moto X. All of these handsets feature Google Android OS.
Technologists are baffled with this incredible success story of a brand, which had become almost extinct in India. A sharp turnaround within 9 months, based solely on ecommerce platform is certainly a case study for management students.
The Xiaomi Success Story
Xiaomi, which entered India in the month of July, had adapted a similar business model. It tied up with Flipkart, and sold their handsets via flash sales, exclusively on their ecommerce platform. There have been several complaints of server getting stuck or website being down for the unprecedented traffic experienced by Flipkart during such flash sales.
Although Indian Air Force has warned against using Xiaomi handsets due to fears of data security, their sales are continuing to surge.
For their newest offering: Redmi Note, they have finally tied up with Airtel as the handset would be offered in selected Airtel stores. But their base has been built, thanks to the exclusive ecommerce based launch, and things will only get better from here.
Right now, Xiaomi has become world’s third largest manufacturer of mobile phones.
Others Are Catching Up
Panasonic has decided to go for the ‘online only’ route with their Eluga series. Their newest launch: Eluga I is only be available on Flipkart; and has been aggressively priced to match other brands such as Xiaomi.
The biggest advantage which ‘ecommerce only’ sale brings to the manufacturer is that, there are no costs involved in maintaining inventory and infrastructure which brick and mortal stores have to spend. There are no middle-men or stockist in between, and thankfully, the savings funnel down to the end customer.
Although such business models can make brick and mortar stores out of their jobs, the end consumers are the ultimate winners.
Do you think that ecommerce only business model adapted by Motorola and Xiaomi is proving to be their biggest advantage? Or this is a fad which will pass away in coming days? Do share your views by commenting right here!
[…] human mind into hyper-action, and results are fabulous for the seller. Motorola was able to sell 6 mobile phones every minute, when it launched Flipkart only business model, wherein their units where only available on […]
when the motorola droid series phones are come to the flipkart …. i want to know about… droid series phones …. pleas add the droid series phones.. to the fipkart…
I believe pricing it “correctly” did the magic for Motorola.
Another factor for Motorola was it was acquired by Google a year ago which resulted in phones with no bloat-ware (almost pure android experience) and timely software updates. Even if Motorola had decided to go with onilne + offline model they would have got same success or may be better in terms of sales. I personally using Motorola phone and found it to be sturdy and of good quality.
Xioami on the other side picking up and their focus is providing the phones at rock-bottom price but it does not have brand-value like Motorola and comes with their own MIUI – highly customised skin. There were some issues with Redmi 1S (not only security issues but heating, battery drain etc..) so if they re-create those with Redmi Note again then it would be tough for them to pitch for Mi 4 or other upcoming models. Their flash sales are frustrating too for most of consumers as nobody wants to spend time on week over week for procuring a phone. It would be good to sale phones through regular “in-stock” and “out-of-stock” system.