Chasing the next wave of e-customers
E-commerce players and retailers become shopping assistants for Indians beyond cities
Knowing that the real money in e-commerce would only come after they go beyond the 100 million English-speaking and internet surfing population, infotech giant Google and major retailers such as Amazon, Flipkart and Walmart are using some of their resources to reach out to tier-III cities and other smaller places in India.
Between them, these companies have put at least 200,000 people on the ground to help people in rural areas with bad connectivity to shop online. The goal is to teach as many as 200 million people to come online and become new customers over the next three to four years.
Amazon India was one of the first movers in this space, starting a ‘Project Udaan’, since renamed Amazon Easy. This was to train people about ways to buy and sell online, from 2015. “As the programme scales and strengthens, we will look to add many more services under Amazon Easy. It will play a significant role in enabling the next 100 million customers in India to enjoy shopping on Amazon.in, starting with the coming festive season,” said Kishore Thota, director, customer experience & marketing at Amazon India.
Starting with 200-plus stores across Andhra and Telangana, Amazon Easy will be rolled out nationally across thousands of existing stores over the next few months. The company is targeting 14,000-plus stores across 21 states with large network partners like Storeking and Vakrangee to smaller ones like Linq and Indiabuys, beside individual shop owners.
“We equip these offline stores with training material that includes skills like searching, browsing and navigation on Amazon.in, helping customers set up Amazon accounts, checkouts, payments, answering status and delivery queries, and refunds and returns if required. Amazon Easy is not only helping more people join the digital eco-system but also opening up self-employment and other job opportunities for semi-skilled and partially-skilled people,” said Thota.
US retail giant Walmart, which runs major business-to-business (B2B) operations in this country, also uses teams of salespeople on the ground for this. They are meant to go to areas near their B2B retail outlets, to help small and traditional store owners order and replenish their inventory. Salespersons go out with computer tablets and take down the orders. This has helped the firm add new sets of customers. Sources said Walmart might now train Flipkart (which it has acquired) as well, to reach out to new sets of online buyers.
Gearing up for an India e-commerce launch, Google has taken steps to understand the universe it wants to get into. For instance, it has been associated with some 2,000 workshops, helping Google to identify sellers.
It has prepared a rural plan as well, mainly through an ‘Internet Saathi’ initiative. Through 48,000 such Saathis across rural parts, Google says it wants to offer assisted shopping till people in such areas are comfortable with the process. Training of Saathis has begun for this, equipped with a laptop and a data modem.
The programme focuses on training women in rural India to explore various uses of the internet. These women were to then impart training to the larger rural community, in their own and neighbouring villages. The programme was launched in partnership with Tata Trusts. The company says at least 15 million women have already benefited and it is active across 140,000 villages.