Not just seasoned entrepreneurs, but celebrities are also hooked by the growing e-commerce segment.
After Bollywood and sports stars such as Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgan, Karisma Kapoor, Salman Khan, Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan, tennis ace Mahesh Bhupathi has jumped on the fledgling e-commerce bandwagon to exploit opportunities.
Bhupathi today launched his e-commerce portal, www.sports365.in, to exclusively market sports goods, apparels and footwear. For the past seven months, Sports365 has been operational in the business-to-business segment, physically.
“I am a sportsman and I think there is a lot of potential for sports e-retailers in the country. With just click of the mouse, customers can get everything related to sports, starting from sports equipment, footwear and apparel to guidance from our experts who will be available online to guide the buyer,” Bhupathi told Business Standard.
He said he got attracted to the segment because of the huge opportunities it promised. “It is very big. The kinds of numbers that are floating around in the market today in the e-commerce space are really huge,” he said.
The e-commerce market in India, expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of close to 40 per cent over the next three years, has seen Bollywood actor Salman Khan investing in Yatra.com, actress Karisma Kapoor in BabyOye.com, and cricketer Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan investing in Exclusively.in, among others.
In January, Bollywood actress Neha Dhupia launched HerStyle, an online store that sells lingerie, nightwear and thermals. Recently, actor Ajay Devgan and Sanjay Dutt invested in TicketPlease, which sells tickets for movies and concerts.
According to brand consultant Harish Bijoor, when a celebrity’s name gets associated with a business, it generally becomes the crowd-puller. Celebrities are expected to be more successful in the online world, when people tend to associate their positive attributes to the brands they invest in or endorse.
“Film stars or sports stars are certainly the crowd-pullers. Everybody puts a website. But when a website has the patronisation of a film star or a sports star, people tend to associate the positive attributes of the star with that website. So, supposing Yatra.com is talking about Salman Khan, the website gets that much positive strokes when people start trusting the brand as well as the film star,” says Bijoor.
He says celebrities are seen investing more and more in e-commerce ventures, as they are looking at entering the market early and reaping the benefits fast — since companies in the space tend to be valued quite high. Experts, however, believe a celebrity endorsing or investing in a site is no guarantee that the site would be able to impress investors for funding.
According to angel investor Paul Shoker: “Today’s investors are smart; they look at the business dynamics of a site before investing and not just the glam quotient.”
Sports365.in aims to use specialists in the sports world to market various products online.
“We are going to make the site very interactive and create a different buying experience. Basically, we will have people who will advise what the right equipment is. For example, I will be advising for tennis and each sport will have its own advisors, who will make sure that the parents know exactly the right equipment to buy for their kids,” said Bhupathi. “We will have some live chats and lot of interaction tools in our site; so, it’s not just like another e-commerce website,” he added.
Sports365 has done a business of about Rs 1 crore a month during the past seven months, by selling goods physically in the business-to-business segment. The sports business market, which stands at about Rs 13,800 crore at present, is growing at a CAGR of 30 per cent, the company said.
