Organising Unorganised Local Commerce

<p><em><strong>InstaShop believes in direct connect between seller and buyer, writes Mayank Garg</strong></em></p><p>Brick and mortar shops in the locality markets are still the backbone of the retail industry of India, accounting for more than 90% of the total retail market of more than $ 600 billion. India has the highest density of these local stores, and these stores backed by a very thick network of distributors, are best suited to serve the customers in the most sustainable way.</p><p>The e-commerce models copied from the western countries have seen a significant growth in the last few years in the India, but their sustainability is still to be tested. InstaShop, a Noida-based startup founded by three IIT Delhi alumni, wants to become the technology enabler for the existing supply chain to provide a better and sustainable alternative to the current e commerce model. The company believes that the existing supply chain fronted by the brick and mortar stores is the most sustainable retail commerce model in India, and will remain as relevant in future as it is today, provided that it is supported by technology to meet the changing buying behavior of customers.</p><p>InstaShop is creating a hyper local mobile marketplace, where buyers and sellers in a locality can connect directly and transact effortlessly, assisted by InstaChat. The possibility of connecting directly with the seller and chat with them for any clarification, customisation and bargains is quite unique. “The local commerce in India works exhaustively on a trust coupled by the personal touch extended by the retailers. In all existing local commerce marketplace this element is missing, InstaShop helps to retain the very same shopping experience as shopping by physically visiting the store .<br><br>Another unique feature of InstaShop is that the customer can request quotes from multiple shops in one go, which is replication of the same behavior of customer for best price discovery when shopping from the local market.</p><p>Buyer can search for any product, category or their favourite store. They can browse through the catalogue and place order, through the catalogue itself or by just taking picture of the buying list, prescription, or the product of their interest. Buyer can also add any of the store as their favorite store from which they want to shop on regular basis, and remain updated on the deals and offers from these stores. Also the customer loyalty programmes offered by sellers can easily be managed through InstaShop.</p><p>There is always a possibility of finding the product of your interest in your locality at a better price in comparison to the major e-commerce platform, which can be delivered instantly. But because this information about local stores and their prices is not readily available to customer, the local merchants are losing out business. With InstaShop we want to organize this information and make it available to customer on his smartphone.<br><br>Merchant registration process on InstaShop is very simple. Merchants can get mobile presence of their business in just few minutes, and start organising and expanding their business with the merchant application, InstaSell. InstaShop does not charge any subscription fees from merchants to register with InstaShop, nor does any commission is charged on the sale of any good or service.</p><p>InstaShop believes in direct connect between seller and buyer, and allowing seller to sell good at their own price directly to the buyer, this provides a very strong feeling of ownership for InstaShop by the merchants, and they help in promoting InstaShop even with their existing customers to provide them hassle free shopping experience.</p><p>The seller directly processes any order placed on InstaShop, InstaShop is not into the operations of fulfillment of order directly, but manages it with tight service level agreement with the sellers, rating and ranking of seller and the incentives on number and timely delivery of orders. “While most of the startups focus on creating delivery networks for hyper local needs, we believe that in India, the distributed existing infrastructure by the local merchants is the most cost effective and manageable solution to make the delivery of the hyper local needs. Creating own delivery workforce to make short time and distance deliveries will face challenge in scaling and covering a wider reach.</p><p>The company has opend its shops in Ghaizabad and Noida, and aims to cover entire NCR by end of July. As the company do not need any operations setup in the new localities where they are expanding, and further they do not charge anything from the merchants, InstaShop is aiming a very aggressive growth and plans to have hundred cities under their coverage within one year.<br><br>(<em>Mayank Garg, founder of InstaShop has extensive experience in strategy, business development and corporate planning, and has previously served as group head, Strategy and Corporate Planning at Tata Power. Gaurav and Rachit, co-founders have more than a decade of experience in founding technology companies and scaling them.</em>)</p>