Wooplr Technologies Pvt. Ltd. on Thursday unveiled their social commerce platform to the media for the first time. The eco-system brings together social sellers, brands, and consumers through a proprietary, cutting-edge technology platform.
Wooplr is the first Indian start-up to disrupt the country's e-commerce space by pioneering the social commerce revolution. The platform aims to be India's first social commerce unicorn business empowering one million social sellers by 2022, thus building the world's largest social distribution network for retail.
Wooplr has already created a pan-India network of 30,000 social sellers who speak over 20 languages and reach out to over 10 million customers spread across 250 towns and cities primarily from the Tier-II/III regions. Wooplr allows anyone to open up their online store in under a minute, add products from their catalog and start selling on social platforms like Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube.
The social sellers earn a profit on every sale made on their store, while Wooplr takes care of all the background work like shipping, payments, returns and customer service. Wooplr's social sellers get to choose from 1 lakh products from over 300 brands.
The platform claims to have a staggering growth rate of 20 percent month on month owing to the diverse range of social sellers that find the platform quite useful and easy to use and scale. Wooplr expects the network to drive sales worth USD 50 million by the end of the current financial year.
The hinterlands of India are joining the internet party. As India forges ahead to be the world's fastest-growing economy, there is a new emerging class of cities/towns with millions of aspirational consumers and an increasing purchasing power vying for attention on the national stage. This paradigm shift will mean that e-commerce companies will increasingly aim to provide personalised experiences based on customer specific needs - something that the social sellers already do by themselves.
"Wooplr pioneered the concept of social selling being able to spot this market shift early on. The platform brings social sellers and brands together to provide customized shopping experiences to consumers. We have created a scalable model to reach out to the new high potential hotspots at a time when most e-commerce companies have focussed primarily on the SEC-A cities," said Arjun Zacharia, Co-founder and CEO, Wooplr.
"Our fast-growing distribution network is immediately valuable to Indian or International brands looking for a compelling launchpad, and an alternative to marketing dollar spends. Wooplr makes the process of driving sales for brands as easy as plug and play and at zero cost. Rising consumerism, smartphone adoption and vernacular content consumption in Tier II and III cities allow Wooplr's social sellers to reach consumers where traditional media and other digital marketing channels can't," he added.
According to ?Rahul Chandra, Managing Director, Helion Ventures,? "Wooplr's business model ensures scale and sustainability without Burning throughs hundreds of millions of dollars. The brands that sell on Wooplr are sold with a personalized touch with respect for their creativity and quality. We are amazed at how social networks based sales have led us to discovering customers from even Tier II/III cities in India for these brands. Wooplr's influencers provide the bridge between these brands and millions of customers."
Industry reports indicate that the future of e-commerce will be powered by the confluence of the following factors - easy access to high-speed internet, smartphone adoption in non-metros and rise of the vernacular shopper.
"Fundamentally we believe that social selling will be the big growth wave in India. The last ten years of e-commerce has brought in 100Mn shoppers online; social commerce will bring in another 200million shoppers for whom the shopping behavior will be discovery-driven rather than being led solely on search. Unique distribution models to reach out to the first-time internet/smartphone users in India will be the key. Wooplr has already secured a headstart, and we are confident that the platform will continue gaining excellent market traction in the following months," said ?Dhruv Kapoor, Managing Director, Sistema Asia Capital Advisory.
"In a country like India, our greatest asset is the human capital. There also lies the biggest challenge - creation of jobs! There are millions of youth and home makers who have passion and the means to become entrepreneurs, and Wooplr as a platform empowers them to do it. Even in an established ecommerce market like China where Taobao and Alibaba exist, social commerce platforms like Yunjiweidian and pinduoduo have disrupted e-commerce by giving a platform to social sellers. Wooplr will create such 1 million Entrepreneurs by 2022 and that is exactly what an economy like India needs," said ?Ankit Nagori, co-founder CureFit.
"Trust is the currency social sellers have from their network. Through online and offline conversations, they reach out to new customers organically. We have managed to build an ecosystem that challenges existing industry standards concerning the cost of customer acquisition. In fact, Wooplr is the first and only e-commerce platform that offers zero cost of customer acquisition," added ?Ankit Sabharwal, Co-founder and CPO, Wooplr.
Wooplr, with its platform, has genuinely re-ignited the next e-commerce revolution in India.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
