In the past 2 years, Amazon India has really scaled up its operations and has grown up to be one of the biggest Ecommerce companies in India. Flipkart has also been doing quite well and has been in the pole position for some time now.
What all these Ecommerce majors are trying to do is get as many as merchants and sellers online so as to sell their products through their website. Both Amazon and Flipkart have their own ‘Sell on Amazon’ and ‘Sell Online on Flipkart’ dedicated seller platforms which provide step by step registration and authorization techniques for sellers to sell their products online through these websites.
Honoring the Digital India campaign, Amazon and Flipkart are now looking out to approach sellers through ‘Studio on Wheels’ to give them information about benefits of selling online and answer their apprehensions.
Catering to small and medium business that are not yet online, both the companies have launched their own set of studio-on-wheels solutions. Both Amazon and Flipkart have employed professionals who will travel to different parts of the country and engage with such sellers who have the potential to get their business online.
Amazon Tatkal
The service does exactly what the name says, i.e., allow the SMBs to register, provide details, authorize, catalogue and sell their products online in less than 60 seconds on Amazon.in. The sellers will also be provided basic seller training at the time of registration to introduce them to the way online businesses work. Company’s professionals will reach out to such sellers and address their apprehensions to make them comfortable about the initiative.
Talking about Tatkal, Gopal Pillai, Director and GM, Seller Services at Amazon India, said, “Our conversations with hundreds of SMBs reveal that there is a high level of interest among them to get online and start selling, but they are unable to overcome perception barriers of the process being time consuming, tedious and complex. We believe this initiative will help sellers to overcome these constraints, get them onboard, and start selling on the Amazon platform with speed and ease.”
This makes complete sense, for the simple fact that most sellers are not aware of ways of reaching to a wider audience. A tailor from a small town in Rajasthan might not have enough knowledge of selling her products online, but once trained and given all information regarding it, her custom-made dresses can be sold completely online while also reaching to all Amazon customers.
Flipkart Spotlist
Spotlist is a similar service a Tatkal, except the company professionals will provide complete cataloguing and listing services to the sellers at their home or workplace. Flipkart will be sending out Blue and white ‘Spotlist’ adorning cars to sellers to help sellers with listing their products online directly. The cars will have cataloguing material, cameras, half-mannequins and photo-boxes to click photos there and post them at the same time.
This way, the sellers will not have to go anywhere else and get their work done at the premises. Spotlist has been available since November 2015 in 5 cities Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. Close to 1000 sellers have been booked and 10000 products are already registered on Flipkart.
How will it help the sellers?
We all know difficult it is for sellers to get online, considering most of their sales happen offline already and they don’t feel the need to expand into different spaces. However, once a seller is informed about the benefits of selling online and reaching out to target audience effectively, it’s very easy for them to get onboard.
Once the catalogue is on display online, customers can simply order their product for which the inventory will be managed by the seller. Through studio-on-wheels, sellers will not have to go around getting their work done for selling online, everything will be done from the comfort of their workplace and instantaneously they will be able to have their products online.
It is a win-win situation for all!
