Flipkart has been riding high since the launch of the new Moto G
smartphone, which was launched exclusively on the retail website.
According to Flipkart, the Moto G launch saw their traffic increase
two-fold from normal days, while as much as 67 percent of its traffic
was driven by Moto G. It added that the Moto G page alone saw 1 million
page views on launch day while Flipkart’s total mobiles sales were five
times that of its usual daily mobile sales.
Firstpost spoke to Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal on the success
of the Moto G and the future of e-commerce in India. Edited excerpts
from the interaction.
Response to Moto G? How has it been compared to say other smartphones that were also launched on the website in the past?
From a demand point of view, this has beaten all our expectations. It
has been the fastest selling mobile phone for sure on Flipkart. We have
run out of stock for the 16 GB version and we’ve put them on pre-order.
People are still pre-booking for this smartphone
Have other pre-orders and launches also done well in the past for Flipkart? Have non-electronics products also done well?
We have been running pre-orders in the past as well. This is the
first time that we had an exclusive on a mobile phone. In books for
instance, we’ve been doing pre-orders for all new releases in India.
We’ve seen pretty good numbers on pre-orders for books as well. Just to
give you an example of that, the book release of Amish Tripathi’s The Oath of the Vayuputras,
had nearly 50,000 pre-orders and we delivered those 50,000 books on day
one itself. We have already developed this capability of taking
pre-orders and living up to to the expectations of the customers.
Do you think it’s possible to repeat this kind of success
with Moto G, where you do an exclusive launch with other products as
well, which are not necessarily says smartphones or electronics?
Well it is the first time that a brand like Motorola has done this,
and even for India, it is the first time that a product is available
only online. We are watching the data closely for Moto G, we are seeing
what more products we can launch just online and will take a call on
that.
What kind of smartphones would you say tend to do well in
online sales? Are budget smartphones outdoing premium ones online as
well?
So what has happened is that the mid-segment has grown the fastest in
India. It’s not just the really cheap budget phones that have done
well. Of course if you want to buy an Android phone for Rs 3000 or Rs
4000, those are also available on Flipkart. But that segment doesn’t
really do that well, because the quality of phones is not always that
great.
Most people who aspire to own a smartphone, want to own a good
quality smartphone, which kind of starts at around Rs 10,000. The
mid-range smartphones have done very well for us, rather than budget
phones.
Which two segments of products would say is expected to grow
fastest in India where e-commerce is concerned? Which products is
Flipkart expecting will grow the fastest?
We’ve positioned ourselves as a trustworthy place to shop from. So
where products are concerned, we are also looking from a quality
perspective. We don’t sell low-quality products at all. If you push out
such products, you might see decent amount of sales, but yes in the end
we are happy to let that go, because we don’t want to be seen as someone
who’s cheating their customers. We want to be known for quality
products.
From a segment point of view, what we’ve seen is that online shoppers
are very aspirational. They have high aspirations and they want to own a
well-developed product but at a cheaper price. So that’s where
e-commerce comes and we’re seeing that aspirational products are doing
well.
Can you elaborate on how you’re looking at aspirational?
So, for instance when it comes to clothing, we’re looking at some
brands that tend to well such as Puma, or even other well-known brands
of sports shoes. Then in shirts brands like Peter England. In
electronics, of course Samsung is doing well. Even as a category, in
smartphones, we’re seeing a lot of premium smartphones doing very well.
Is there a particular strategy for tier II and tier III towns? What are the obstacles you see for growth in these cities?
These towns and cities are definitely the next level of growth. They
will be a bigger driver of growth for e-commerce in India in the coming
years. Metro shoppers have by and large taken to e-commerce but the
tier-II and tier III is starting to grow. There are two aspects for our
strategy here. One is to make sure that we have the products that those
customers want. Second is whether we have a service level which is up to
a standard that is acceptable to the customers in those markets.
These are the two aspects that we really need to push on over the next few years in these markets.
Which platform do you think will see bigger growth in these towns for e-commerce? Mobile or still desktops and PCs?
Mobile will be soon be a bigger proportion in those cities, because
broadband connections are still easier to get in larger cities but in
smaller cities, it’s less prevalent to used broadband. Also the way
people are getting converted into smartphone users across the country,
we believe that over the next 5-6 years, over half of the mobile users
will shift to smartphones.
We believe that a majority of customers in tier-II and tier-III
cities will probably have a mobile only device and not even have a PC or
desktop. For them, Internet access will only be on mobile and they will
shop only from mobile.
Lastly what sort of reactions do you see from offline stores,
the brick and mortar retailers, to the growth of e-commerce players in
India?
India’s market is so nascent from an organised retail point of view
that I think there’s a huge scope of growth for both offline retailers
and e-commerce platforms to grow. You will see more and more
partnerships between e-commerce platforms and offline retailers. Offline
retailers will come on the e-commerce marketplaces and sell their
products online. We already have some examples of those and you’ll see
more of that in the future.
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