Exclusive | Endeavour is to be a complete virtual player: HomeShop18's Sundeep Malhotra

Homeshop18, an online retailer, started in 2008 is one of the leading players in the e-commerce space with presence across TV, Internet, mobile and the newly launched ‘Virtual shopping wall.’ The company has been a pioneer in the virtual shopping in India and is a frontrunner amongst its peers to have its own call centre manned by over 1000 call centre agents. It accepts over 60,000 calls per day, thereby making it leap ahead in terms of meeting customer demands as 24x7. This has helped Homeshop18’sr customers to understand more about the products and eventually in building the trust. 

Talking about Homeshop18 and Homeshop18 TV journey, Sundeep Malhotra, founder & CEO says, “we began as a 24 hour shopping channel at a time when virtual shopping was at a nascent stage in India. In 2011, we took a logical step of starting our e -commerce business hence we began to focus on e commerce and recently we have launched the world’s first dynamic shopping wall called, Scan N Shop at T3 domestic airport.” He was speaking to Adgully.

In the last few years, the company has brought the convenience of shopping to their customers doorstep and also helped the overall industry/category grow. There is no doubt about the fact that companies like HomeShop18 have changed the perception of Indian consumers about the home shopping industry.
Adds Malhotra, “India is conventionally a mom & pop retail market, so the biggest challenge for us has been to build the trust in the minds of our consumers. We take pride in saying that HomeShop18 has successfully built this trust with great service, wide range of product categories and other innovative ways like demonstrative videos etc.”
When asked to share some success stories. Malhotra said that one of the success stories recently was Homeshop18.com and Google Online Shopping Festival partnership. With a 300 per cent sales growth and 60 per cent new customers, Homeshop18.com was the most visited site during that day.  It was also interesting that 40 per cent of products sold were from new categories. He says, “It also made us realize that we need to aim for better forecasting as Homeshop18.com cleaned out inventories of best selling categories by 4:00 pm and most recently we launched Scan N Shop, world’s first dynamic shopping wall   at T3 Domestic Airport, New Delhi.”

When asked given the growing mobile and internet market, what are your expectations with the entire ecommerce industry in India in 2013, he said, “The coming year looks promising for the industry. We are at the tipping point of e-commerce as more and more Indians are accessing Internet to make purchases online.”

HomeShop18.com is investing in warehouses, adding further Malhotra said, “to make online shopping an unparalleled experience for the valued consumers, Homeshop18.com is not only investing in improving product categories and customer experience but also our backend infrastructure which is the backbone for a great customer service.”

In terms of investment made in expanding product categories, he explained by saying that all the categories are seeing healthy growth. They keep doing various changes in their user interface to delight their customers, each category has a unique requirement and they keep investing in enhancing the product category/ profile. Every ecommerce industry is competing with a brick and mortar format.

“So our key focus remains high on expecting the need of the customer.  We have seen a huge demand in categories like digital, home & kitchen and apparels. Gifts and health & beauty are also showing high growth trajectory, although the base is small,” he said.

Also as told by Malhotra interestingly in last few months because of rising female online shoppers, it has been witnessed that jewellery section (gold, diamonds, semi-precious, fashion jewellery) has seen quite good sales. He believes that Indians are now confident in shopping online and are investing huge sums in high involvement products like gold and diamond. Watches are another category where immense growth is seen. Home and kitchen category is also fast growing. With women juggling between professional and personal life, e-commerce platform has made it really easy for them to shop and get the best from the home.

New initiatives expected in 2013:

Homeshop18 has already started New Year with a unique and innovative m-commerce model called ‘Scan N Shop’ at T3 Domestic Airport, New Delhi. It works on QR code and smart phones. Passengers can shop by simply scanning the QR code given with the product on the screens and place the order in the most hassle free manner.

In 2013, as far as innovations are concerned, they would like to bridge the gap between offline and online shopping experience by using demonstrative product videos on the site, virtual trial of apparels using a webcam etc. Also, more payment options for customers are something they would focus at. They already have over 8 payment options for their customers and the gap between COD and online payment is slowly narrowing which they would like bring down further with options like flexi EMIs, wallet payment etc. 

“Our long term endeavour is to be a complete virtual player across various touch points and screens. Technology is no more just confined to computers and laptops, Smart phones and tablets are now being accessed for online shopping like never before. Hence, we are looking at more technology avenues on which we can be available and gives users a great online shopping experience,” said Malhotra while signing off. | By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal(at)adgully.com]