How Snapdeal is helping SMEs embrace e-commerce

Indian e-commerce space has come a long way with companies like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon enabling millions of sellers to evangelize a new sales channel -- electronic commerce. While Flipkart and Amazon have 7,500 and 18,000 sellers respectively on their platform, their peer the New Delhi-based Snapdeal has over 1,00,000 sellers currently using its platform.

The Softbank funded company enables merchants to showcase their products to a whopping 40 million registered customer base. “For small sellers like us (SMEs), business is more or less the same every month. However, with the advent of eCommerce marketplaces we now have access to audiences across the country,” says a seller on multiple ecommerce platforms.

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In line with Snapdeal’s vision to enable one million small businesses to do business online the company had launched CapitalAssist which enables sellers on the platform by helping them meet their growing working capital requirement as they scale their businesses. Banks and NBFCs can participate on the platform to provide seamless and low-cost financing to sellers on Snapdeal depending on their current and future business requirements.

At present, Snapdeal has sellers from 400 towns and expects it to double this year. Going a step forward today,, Snapdeal has tied up with GS1, a leading global organization dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards, and launched a Scan and Sell feature for sellers. This will enable sellers to list their products for sale on the platform in less than five minutes with just a scan of the product barcode and keying in the pricing details.

Scan and Sell is the first such initiative by any Indian eCommerce platform aimed at simplifying and automating the process of listing products for sale. Earlier this year the company also forayed into TV Commerce with a 50:50 joint venture with DEN, one of India’s biggest television distribution companies. This move will give another opportunity to Snapdeal’s merchants to embrace TV commerce easily. The scan and sell feature is currently available for a select assortment of branded products in the electronics and fashion categories. The company plans to extend this to the entire products portfolio in the coming months.

Snapdeal achieved target to have  100K sellers on its platform this month and claims to have 1,000 sellers who are doing over Rs 1 crore annually.

In a bid to ease the process for merchants, Snapdeal launched Seller Zone App for Android powered mobile phones last year. By using the app, merchants can check and manage inventory and pricing of their products listed on the platform. It also lets merchants monitor their competitors’ prices and match them with a single tap.

Currently, Snapdeal makes over 50 per cent of its sales through mobile based transactions. Given the increased mobile penetration and smartphone usage in the country, this initiative was launched in line with the company’s forecast that mobiles will drive the next wave of buyers and sellers to its platform. Such moves by Snapdeal to woo small merchants will certainly help small sellers to scale up their online channel with easy to sell features, financing and infrastructural supports.

As of now, we have seen heavily funded eCommerce companies investing in technology, supply chain and attracting talent but now they are also making investments to support small businesses, which will eventually bring more maturity to the entire eCommerce ecosystem.

"An older version of this article indicated that Snapdeal has over 50,000 sellers and 25 million registered users. Snapdeal has since reached out to us and updated us with new data points as mentioned in the article."