Flipkart’s Shopsy has recently announced the launch of a zero-commission marketplace. Through this initiative, Flipkart will help organise and bring smaller sellers across Fashion, grocery and home categories, online. This will further enable and amplify the supply of products and catalogues on the platform, and spur e-commerce growth across tier 2 cities and towns that have been untouched by digital retail so far.
Today 70% of Flipkart’s customers come from tier 2 and tier 3 cities. With Shopsy, Flipkart aims to scale this to 90%. Flipkart believes gamification along with social commerce features will help it achieve this mission. One such feature is Shop & Earn, where users will be able to unlock higher incentives on achieving a certain weekly/monthly target. This kind of gamification will further lead to virality and evangelization for fringe e-commerce customers.
Over the last decade, Flipkart has championed several initiatives to unlock value for its customers leveraging tech and innovation. This forms a strong and critical base for the success of a next-generation social commerce platform. Sellers are already leveraging Flipkart’s ad tech platform to complement the zero-commission strategy. Additionally, Flipkart’s low cost logistic network and affordability programs like ‘Flipkart Pay Later’ are two other key levers that would act as game changing catalysts in the context of social commerce.
“Our vision with Shopsy is to enable digital commerce for everyone across India. We have received an overwhelming response and are further looking to enable several initiatives on the platform to accelerate growth. Shopsy is growing 100% week on week. The platform is demonstrating the behaviour of a typical social app and virality is starting to kick in. To further expedite this, we aim to bring the best of e-commerce to social commerce as we progress in our journey. The Flipkart Group has been committed to constantly expanding the scope of e-commerce; and Shopsy is an important step in that direction.”
– Prakash Sikaria, Senior Vice President – Growth and Monetization, Flipkart
