Omnichannel is a constant consideration: Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy

Flipkart's deep customer understanding and India-first innovations continue, says Krishnamurthy

Days after the US retail giant Walmart closed the $16-billion deal, which gave it 77 per cent ownership in e-commerce marketplace Flipkart, Chief Executive Officer KALYAN KRISHNAMURTHY said the firm continues to be run independently. In an interview with Bibhu Ranjan Mishra & Alnoor Peermohamed, Krishnamurthy said the company was quickly building or acquiring capabilities to tap the next 100-200 million consumers. Edited excerpts:

Now that Flipkart is part of a larger conglomerate, what is going to be your strategy for building capabilities internally or acquiring those externally? 

Just to clarify, I don’t completely agree with the comment. We are not necessarily part of a big company. We have raised money from one of the world’s largest retailers and they are a big investor. Flipkart’s deep customer understanding and India-first innovations continue. So nothing actually changes on that front. 

On the second part, we have 1,500 in-house engineers. They are based out of India, but they have global skills. So we can build several things on our own. But, if we see a very strong technology team in India, our culture matches, they have a deep understanding of Indian customers, and if that is a capability we want to offer our customers, we can look at a merger or acquisition. 

The next phase of growth in the Indian e-commerce space is expected to come from smaller cities and even rural areas. What is the strategy you are putting in place to acquire the next 100 or 200 million customers?

The DNA of the company is understanding its current and future consumers. One thing we’ve always been very proud of is local innovation. Flipkart enabled e-commerce in India in the past 10 years. We have been championing local innovations all these years. A lot of research has been done recently that says the next 100-200 million users in e-commerce in India will speak languages other than English. The user interface they prefer, partly because of their current habits of being on platforms such as WhatsApp, is actually not necessarily search and browse, but voice. The acquisition of Liv.ai, which we have just announced, is exactly on those lines. They bring together the customer preference of voice and local Indian languages. 

‘We have 1,500 in-house engineers. They are based out of India, but they have global skills. So we can build several things on our own,'  Kalyan Krishnamurthy

E-commerce in India is growing much faster than in the US or China, but the drop-off rates here are also very high. After transacting once, customers don’t come back to e-commerce platforms. Why is that?

I have a very different view on the reasons for the drop-off rates. Of course, there are those who drop off naturally as some experiences they are looking for are missing. It might be language or it may be bandwidth. But to me, one of the major reasons for the high drop-offs is that 85 per cent of the Indian consumers buy groceries, and that space has not been fully targeted by e-commerce players in the country. 

People are still buying stuff which falls into that 15 per cent bucket (non-grocery items). This is the reason why people don’t keep revisiting a site as they do in China.

What’s your plan about omnichannel play? That’s something every e-commerce player now is talking about. 

Building omnichannel capabilities comes up at several discussions internally.  There are two types of omnichannel that has played out — one is online guys going offline and the other is offline guys going online. We have different views on that. I’ve looked at and have analysed both the methods very deeply and have some views on that.

But as of today, does Flipkart have a clear view on what we want to do on this front? The answer is no, not yet. We’re still evaluating it and haven’t taken a position on that.

Flipkart is building capabilities, both internally and externally. You’ve addressed voice search and have even started working on the grocery segment. What’s next?

This is a tough question. The last four or five acquisitions have not been in a particular area. We acquired F1, which is an entirely service company. We acquired Jeeves, which is again another services and operations company. Then we acquired PhonePe, which I think is among the top two or three payments companies in India.

 So it’s very hard to say what is next, but we’re very opportunistic and something which fits into our customer vision, with strong tech capabilities, we will absolutely go after it. That’s the broader common denominator.