Indiatimes shopping
 | |
Type of site |
E-commerce (Online shopping) |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | The Times of India |
| Created by | Gautam Sinha, Saurabh Malik, Vivek Pandey |
| Website |
shopping |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Required |
| Launched | 2000 |
| Current status | Online |
Indiatimes Shopping is the ecommerce division of The Times of India Group, India's largest media conglomerate. It is one of the pioneers in electronic commerce in India and services its customers through various channels including online and selling over phone. It also provides platform services for brands to go online and sell their products in partnership through White-label. Some of the major categories sold through Indiatimes Shopping include men & women footwear, apparel & accessories, lifestyle, home décor, mobile phones, consumer electronics, health & personal beauty products, books, jewellery, baby products and flowers & gifts. Indiatimes Shopping currently operates through a hybrid model which is a mix of warehousing and marketplace.[1]
Business model
Indiatimes Shopping initiated its operation in the year 2000, being one of the earliest e-commerce[2] companies in India. It has various business models.
E-tailing
Today Indiatimes Shopping sells a range of products online including footwear, apparel, mobile phones, consumer electronics, computers & accessories, flowers & gifts, home décor items, books and a lot more. Customers have the option of paying through credit card, debit card, netbanking and cash on delivery.
Print Business - Reader’s Offer
It also has a popular business model called The Times of India Reader’s Offer which is essentially its print shopping business in partnership with the print arm of BCCL.
Reader’s Offer offers product deals for readers of The Times of India newspaper. This offer is available for many cities in India including Kochi, Jaipur, Pune, Nagpur, Indore, Chennai, Kanpur, Nashik, Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Kozhikode, Bhubaneswar, Vadodara, Ranchi, Ludhiana, Madurai, Coimbatore, Allahabad, Lucknow, Surat, Rajkot, Trivandrum, Hyderabad and Guwahati. The deals include products from mobile phones and accessories, electronics, kitchen appliances, fashion accessories, health and beauty products, computers and accessories, laptops and tablets, TVs and music players from brands and private-labels.
White Label
Indiatimes Shopping has an exclusive tie up with various brands like Airtel, Aviva, and Lufthansa. It creates microsites for these brands and offers them their catalogue and backend facilities. This helps clients with end-to-end solution for their ecommerce operations, and also helps them run loyalty programs by offering gifts to their employees and customers. With its White Label business, Indiatimes Shopping gives access of 8 million+ products, sourced from 5000+ vendors and delivers to 2600+ cities across India.
Brand Shops
Indiatimes Shopping has tied up with many brands and does business in collaboration with them. Some of its brands shops are NokiaShop,[3][4][5] Gitanjalishop and Satvikshop. Nokiashop.com gives its customers a prospect of choosing a range of Nokia phones and accessories from Indiatimes Shopping website. Gitanjalishop.com displays all the Gitanjali products on Indiatimes Shopping as a separate portal. Satvikshop.com lists all the organic and ayurvedic edibles, tapping organic products lovers. Godrejshop.com showcases all Godrej Appliances and gives better prices and experience to consumers.
Ad Sales Business
Indiatimes Shopping also has a business model in form of Ad Sales. Through this model, the company generates revenue by selling ad space to the advertisers directly and through ad networks.
Journey
Indiatimes Shopping has cemented its foothold in ecommerce industry before other players like Flipkart and Snapdeal started ecommerce in India. When the company was incepted in 2000, it used to work on Open Marketplace model with multiple listing of same product. After some time it entered into Controlled Marketplace and Buy & Sell model along with Warehousing. Gautam Sinha, the Chief Operating Officer of Times Internet Limited has been instrumental in taking Indiatimes Shopping at a level today where the company sees itself as a cash positive business in months to come. Since 2013 Saurabh Malik is the business Head of Indiatimes Shopping. Saurabh has been instrumental in bringing the business toward profitability and has come up with new White Label alliances. The company is also going to launch its own teleshopping in following months.
Business Focus
Indiatimes Shopping has products in all major categories including footwear, fashion apparel & accessories, computers, electronics, mobile phones & accessories, flowers & gifts, health and beauty products. Under the leadership of Saurabh Malik, focus towards bottom line got aligned. From low profit margin categories like mobile phones, electronics and computers, the focus has now shifted to high profit margin categories like footwear, apparel, lifestyle & more.
Over years, the revenue growth for footwear category resulted in a revenue growth of 70%. The vendor base has also increased by 75%, with more than 10,000 unique products added to footwear category.Similarly, revenue for apparel category from year 2011 to 2014 witnessed a remarkable revenue growth of 2000%. With the current run rate, Indiatimes Shopping is poised to be a cash positive business in next few months. Indiatimes Shopping has partners from SMEs, OEMs and brands.
Key people
Gautam Sinha is the Chief Operating Officer of Times Internet Limited.[6] Saurabh Malik is the Business Head of Indiatimes Shopping and Vivek Pandey heads Product and Technology..
Location
The company's headquarters is located in Gurgaon's prime Udyog Vihar area near Delhi-Gurgaon highway. It has offices and customer service centers across India, including Noida, Jaipur, Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi. Indiatimes Shopping's warehouses are located in Daryaganj and Dwarka, Delhi.
Indiatimes Shopping uses in-house ecommerce technology platform that can handle complex e-commerce execution requirements related to Business, Logistics,[7] Finance, Marketing & Content.
mCommerce
The mobile app of shopping.indiatimes.com was officially launched in the year 2012 on Android and iOS. The mobile version of the site was launched in October 2014.
See also
References
- ↑ J, Preethi. "IndiaTimes Shrugs Off Marketplace Model; Site Re-launch Soon; To Launch Vertical Sites". TechCircle. India. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
- ↑ "E-shopping made easy". Times of India. Retrieved 2014-08-08.
- ↑ "Indiatimes unveils Nokia Shop". VCCircle. Retrieved 2012-01-16.
- ↑ "Nokia to sell phones online, partners Indiatimes Shopping". Livemint. Retrieved 2012-01-16.
- ↑ "Nokia ties up with Indiatimes Shopping, launches NokiaShop". Times of India. Retrieved 2012-01-17.
- ↑ "Gautam Sinha elevated to COO of Times Internet". VCCircle. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
- ↑ Pahwa, Nikhil. "E-commerce Players Have To Take A Larger Ownership Of Logistics – Gautam Sinha, Indiatimes E-Commerce". MediaNama. India. Retrieved 27 September 2011.
- "Cash-on-delivery hurts bottom line of cos like Flipkart, Snapdeal due to extra associated costs". The Economic Times. Retrieved 2013-11-04.
- "Beware! Fakes, grey market imports of reputed brands flourishing in India’s booming online retail market". The Times of India. Retrieved 2014-10-14.
- "Shoppers log on to comparison portals for picking up best deals." Retrieved 2014-20-10.