Exclusive | We will not shy away from acquisitions: Times Internet's Gautam Sinha

The growth of e-Commerce in India during the past few years has been phenomenal in the last few years. With over 100 million users online ecommerce industry in India is already pegged at $3 bn in 2011. One of the earliest starters in this space and now amongst the top five players in this category is Indiatimes Shopping. It is also one of the most mature and innovative player that has uniquely leveraged the opportunity that was thrown at it.

 

The growth that Indiatimes Shopping and thereby Times Internet, the company has witnessed is in no small measure credited to Gautam Sinha, Director, Technology & e-Commerce. Sinha joined the Times Group in 2007 as CTO, and leads and drives the technology strategy, vision and execution for all the internet, mobile and telecommunication properties of the group. He has over 24 years of rich experience in technology innovation and execution, which includes a wealth of startup and industry expertise including CashEdge Inc, Sevant, Aspect Communications,  Neural Applications Corporation and at the Ministry of Defense in India (DRDO). Mr Sinha holds a MS in Computer Science from the University of Iowa (USA) and a BS in Computer Science from Birla Institute of Technology. He has been awarded numerous US patents for his work done in telecommunications and financial services.

 

With a view to gain more insights into the path that Indiatimes Shopping is taking going forward, Adgully had a lengthy discussion with Mr Sinha, the following is the excerpts of the same.

 

 

Gautam Sinha (GS): There is a perceptible change that has been witnessed. Customers are getting more aware and demanding which is forcing the vendors to focus on quality and service. They are demanding a holistic purchasing experience around the products that they purchase. My belief is that top 4-5 players will deliver a similar customer experience by the end of 2012. This will include different types of delivery, timeframe of delivery etc in Tier III cities. Everyone player will have to give COD (cash on delivery). So a lot of functionalities will be offered to induce the transactions. This leads us to conclude that the primary competition of e-Commerce has become offline today. In terms of volume of business, e-Commerce is less than a per cent of offline business. Hence the growth potential is enormous but we have to win the customers confidence that in online shopping, he will actually get the product he asked for and within the timeframe. The suppliers have to live up to this. My belief is that by the end of the year you will see this being delivered by the top 4-5 players. I think the industry will continue to grow at greater than 60 per cent and the top 4-5 players will grow at 100 per cent.

 

 

GS: I think from a lot of categories. Earlier growth was only in books and electronics. But in the last six months we have seen fashion and lifestyle products, baby products growing well. A lot of niche customers are getting developed. Grocery as a category is also growing albeit at a local level. Besides demand for videos for certain kind of categories like fashion or lifestyle where there is a higher emotional connect.

 

 

GS: Yes. Just on Nokia we are doing a sales of Rs 3 crores per month from Tier II and Tier III and we see it doubling every month. This category is extremely lucrative. It is one of the products where the consumer can compare prices across brands & across e-shopping sites and pick up the best.

 

 

GS: One of the announcements we made some time ago was our relationship with Nokia. We have launched an official Nokia shop at the beginning of this year. The core objective is to bring strong offline brands online. We provide Nokia with technology platform, the CRM and entire services that an offline store will provide. As part of Indiatimes strategy a few more relationships are on anvil and will be announced by August. We are planning to launch 8 such categories including fashion, jewellery and electronics. We are going to announce a few more relationships like Nokia by August.

 

 

GS: Absolutely. Logistics is something that you build yourself or you develop an ecosystem with strong partners, with whom you have strong relationships. Indiatimes has chosen to do the latter. We will work with multiple logistic partners and with most of them the effort is to build a strategic partnership.

 

 

GS: Sure. In logistics space, we have already done one investment. There are plans to do four more investments in this category. In logistics when we do investments it is important to note that the last mile delivery is the key objective but at the same time managing returns is more important as also offering specialized services etc. So we are looking at partners where we can make investments and build services- that’s the backend. On the supplier side the company is talking to  most of the top brands in the country. Categories like cameras, electronics, mobiles, and computers are doing well. We are trying to expand to other categories as well like jewellery, fashion and also advertising relationships. All the relationships will be deep rooted relationships with highly integrated supply chains. We will continue to make strategic investments in multiple companies because we want the ecosystem to be strong. Wherever we need to make investments or acquire a company, we will not shy away from it.

 

 

GS: Yes definitely. If you look at the mobile platform that Indiatimes has launched, it has been created very differently from the web. What a lot of players do is – you download mobile application from their website so u replicate the web experience on mobile. Instead what we have done is extended it into 3 dimensions. Utilise the mobile as a mobile device and not treat it as a web experience. For example today most mobiles have cameras, so we allow a user to scan product code and it will lead him on to the product page. One does not have to search. There the user can click on the content button and he will get the prices of that particular product not only from us but from multiple vendors, at that point of time. This will lead the customer to complete the transaction from the mobile. In that sense it is a scan, compare and shop experience.

 

 

GS: Yes. We are very active in making a recommendation and doing one-to-one marketing to our key customers. The objective is to understand the customer buying behavior & psychology and be able to give them the value they are looking for. In terms of technology platform we have a fairly sophisticated backend which means from the point the customer places an order till the point he gets delivery, everything is integrated within one system. All our partners are also tightly integrated to the system.

 

 

GS: One of the things we are particular about is the path to profitability. We roughly want to do business of Rs 1 crore per employee. And we are not here for short-term at the cost of long-term profitability.