Nitin Konde
4 April, 2016, Bangalore: In a move to ramp up its deliveries and reduce logistics cost, ShopClues is looking to expand its seller base and make intra-zonal shipments the norm. Now, with this move, company is planning to give a tough run to its competitors as these days, most of the etailers are concentrating more on providing a quick delivery to its customers rather than focusing on discounts.
Commenting on the recent move by the company, Radhika Agarwal, CEO, ShopClues said, “We are moving towards dividing the country into different cities as opposed to regions for our shipments. The idea of shipping from within the zone of a customer works perfectly for structured categories. The unstructured category might or might not benefit from this. The company will work with local courier partners for deliveries within the zone”.
Shipping within a zone leads to a cost saving of about 25 per cent, resulting in better margins for the marketplace and prices for the customers. Alibaba-backed marketplace Paytm has also been expanding its online-to-offline shipments across regions to speed up delivery time. ShopClues had last year introduced the concept of neighbourhood market feature, which is currently in the pilot stage in Gurgaon for four-six hour deliveries, reports ET.
“We are currently at 4 lakh sellers on our platform and plan to increase it to 12 lakh sellers by the end of 2016. This will also improve our regional selections and price range of products, mainly from the tier-2 and 3 markets,” adds Agarwal.