Making Social Selling A Success

What’s the worst that can hap­pen?’ this is the question that Arjun Zacharia asked himself when he took the plunge to start Wooplr or just be­fore many of the other decisions he took in life. Zacharia was a risk taker and this might perhaps have helped him in his journey as the founder of Wooplr, India’s first and largest so­cial commerce company.

Wooplr has about 100 employees with offices in Bengaluru and Hangzhou in China. Being the co-founder and CEO of the company, Zacharia has spearheaded the most important decisions of the com­pany right from its inception. Some of these decisions involved building India’s first social commerce platform, expand­ing its operations to over 250 Tier -2/3/4 towns, increasing the sales by 10-fold in the past 12 months and setting up inter­national sourcing operations starting with China.

The company is also doing its bit in im­pacting the nation and being a part of the larger good. Elaborating on this Zacha­ria said, “Wooplr is enabling 35,000-plus individuals monthly by selling with zero investment from their side, 70 per cent of these individuals are from Tier-2 cities and beyond. That makes us one of the largest employment genera­tors in the country.”

While Zacharia mentions that the company is among the largest employ­ment generators in the country, the dou­bling of the company every 3-4 months makes him more optimistic about the fu­ture. He strongly believes that in the next five years, this number would be 1 million. “The key to growth is being close to the stakeholders of your business, listening to them and understanding their needs and keep building your business accordingly,” says Zacharia.

Zacharia believes that he is just getting started and his best is yet to come. His mother who always showed him how to be brave and fight the toughest times and his father, who dedicated his life for the improvement of the society, are his inspi­ration. Through the quote ‘Life is a mara­thon, not a 100-metre race. So, don’t get disheartened ; the key is to keep running!’ Zacharia encourages all the young entre­preneurs to keep moving in their lives.

Wooplr today empowers more than 2 lakh influencers to earn money by en­abling them to start their online stores. Built on the core principles of social en­gagement and a lean marketplace, this business model ensures profitability on every single transaction for the platform. The long term plan of Wooplr is to bring local commerce to the mobile. Also, the concept of Wooplr appeals to a shopper in Bengaluru as much as in Boston; so they want to take this global.

Wooplr pioneered the concept of social selling being able to spot this market shift early on. The platform brings social sellers and brands together to provide customised shopping experiences to consumers. The company has created a scalable model to reach out to the new high potential hotspots at a time when most e-commerce companies have focused primarily on the SEC-A cities.

Wooplr’s fast-grow­ing distribution net­work is immediately valuable to Indian or international brands looking for a compel­ling launchpad, and an alternative to mar­keting dollar spends. The company makes the process of driving sales for brands as easy as plug and play and at zero cost. Ris­ing consumerism, Smartphone adoption and vernacular content consumption in Tier 2 and 3 cities allow Wooplr’s social sellers to reach consumers where tradi­tional media and other digital marketing channels cannot.