Swirl Launches Live Video Shopping for D2C & Retail brands

 

India’s leading Live Commerce Mobile SaaS provider SWIRL has announced the decision to introduce enhanced Live & Interactive Video Shopping Experiences to the Indian market that enables D2C, E-Commerce and Retail brands to improve customer engagement, and increase sales conversions by inspiring customers to have the same confidence to buy online, as they do in-store.

This is especially more relevant now than ever as customer adoption to video shopping during the pandemic has skyrocketed and both SMB's and large business houses like the TATA's are starting to take notice. Take Tanishq for example, who recently sold over INR 100 Crore ($13.5M) worth of Jewellery through WhatsApp video calling in just 2 months. Several other retail brands such as Kalyan, Crocs, Pothys, etc are now following suit. Global ecommerce tech companies like Etsy saw a 2X jump in GMS from $5B+ to 10B+ after adding video as a feature while Shopify has begun listing live shopping apps on its marketplace.

The Founders of Swirl, Kaizad Hansotia (CEO) and Bheshaj Joshi (COO) believe that Lockdown or no lockdown, consumers today are going to find alternatives to interact and shop from their favourite brands. “Just like how we saw traditional and modern retail co-exist, similarly we will see Live Commerce becoming the next new normal and the fastest growing subset of eCommerce, with the imminent 5G rollout further accelerating this trend”, said Kaizad. “Clearly video shopping is a sustainable trend and not just a pandemic fad so businesses in the future, both small and big will slowly realize the futility of paying millions in rents or other real estate expenses when the customers expect the same experience digitally” added Bheshaj.

Livestream shopping first originated in China and now has over 524M+ livestreamers and generated an estimated $170Bn in 2020 while the west is now playing catchup with Amazon, Google, Instagram and Youtube testing their own version of shoppertainment. Globally, several private equity investors such as Tenth Avenue holdings, Real ventures, Andressen Horowitz, Sequoia, etc have also started to make bets in companies like Bambuser ($122M+), and Livescale ($5M+) as Video Commerce becomes more mainstream. The market in india is estimated to reach US$35B+ by 2025

Swirl's USP is that it is not just limited to Live videos but also uses short form videos that are immersive and shoppable. Plus it acts as a marketing tech solution that can be used to retarget engaged shoppers that are more likely to convert. This shortens purchase journeys by bridging the online-offline gap. It uses state-of-the-art technology that is infinitely scalable, and adds a proprietary Interactive layer on top of video, using Text, Chat, WhatsApp, SMS, & Voice to make the entire experience as close to in-real-life as possible. Businesses have full control on customer data with access to real-time analytics to monitor performance. Plus, swirl can be easily whitelabelled and integrated with Shopify / WooCommerce or any custom tech-stack without writing a single line of code.

More than 100+ fast growing brands in India such as Unlimited Fashion by Arvind, ITC Fabelle, GIVA, PN Rao, Zariin, BeChef, Humblebee and AltoVida trust Swirl. As more businesses look to connect virtually with their customers who are stuck at home and glued to their mobile phones, Live Video shopping is quickly emerging to be another significant arm of retail besides traditional brick-n-mortar and eCommerce. It is safe to say that just like how Whatsapp made SMS less relevant, Video is going to do the same to text, and images as clearly video-first is the future of eCommerce and online shopping with Live Commerce destined to become mainstream worldwide.