Designing merchandise for B2C (Business to Consumer) ecommerce is comparatively “easy”, in accordance to B2B (Business to Business) ecommerce startup Udaan’s Product Manager Abhilash Pillai.
“As a B2C consumer, you can visualise yourself as a consumer, so it’s easy to design products for B2C consumer ecommerce, but in B2B, the challenge is that you need to know how the mind of the consumer works and how their mentality changes,” Abhilash stated. He was talking at the third version of YourStory’s Future of Work, India’s largest product-design-tech convention, on Friday.
In his discuss, Abhilash emphasised on how the world of the Indian retailer could be very completely different from the B2C market.
“Their biggest challenge is adoption. The dependency of the B2B seller is strongly on the marketplace, hence adoption ends up dropping significantly,” he stated.
Udaan needs inform the retailer that they don’t have to depart their store, for procurement or relationship constructing, they only have to come on-line, Abhilash stated.
Udaan Product Manager Abhilash Pillai
Retail companies, particularly the on a regular basis kirana or mother-and-pop shops see rather a lot of footfall. These shops should not solely owned but in addition manned by the house owners. And at any given cut-off date, there are at the least 5 to six folks asking for completely different merchandise, gadgets, and a spotlight of the retailer-keeper.
Thus, all through the day, these retailer-keepers and house owners not solely have to handle the on a regular basis operations of their shops, but in addition guarantee issues like inventory, merchandise’ security and many others.
“Now in many kirana stores, there isn’t much active involvement by the owner or store keeper. The sellers come in check what is needed, make the list and leave. But then there also are retailers in fashion, clothing, and footwear, who are actively involved in procurement. These retailers have to travel to the seller markets and buyers are also fine with it, because these are high touch and feel kind of products,” Abhilash stated.
How to make retailers undertake tech
Today most retailers want an answer that makes their lives simpler and are very lively in conversations, however they merely don’t convert as shoppers, Abhilash identified. The crew at Udaan realised that these retailers need a resolution that has lesser adoption challenges and wish comfort.
Citing an instance of how the startup made it easier for retailers, Abhilash spoke about the sugar companies in Karnataka.
“With Udaan, the retailer was simply ready to see the completely different sugar sellers on the platform, the place they had been, what costs had been accessible. What this helped us do is take the product and show the way it works to the store keepers in actual-time.”
The retailers already realised that they wanted to go browsing. But what made the adoption quicker for Udaan was the introduction of GST (Goods and Services Tax) listings of the completely different tax constructions on its platform.
Making the retailers use the product constantly
It is simple to get folks to use the platform a few times, however the problem lies in getting them to use it a number of occasions, Abhilash famous. To get the retailers to purchase on-line recurrently, meant giving them “completely different nudges”, he shared
“We thought why not match the offline demand that’s there on-line at the similar time. So as a substitute of constraining your self, give related reductions and provides two completely different days like for instance – Monday and Thursday. And the response we noticed was phenomenal. The communication has to be clear and easy,” stated Abhilash.
He additionally emphasised the want for having “extra toes on the road” to get the product going.
“If a purchaser isn’t on-line or shopping for for three weeks, the crew finally ends up sending toes on road to perceive what the problem is. This additionally helped the crew in understanding the gaps in the product.”
While all these pointers assist in the progress and stickiness of a retailer to a B2B e-commerce platform, what’s crucial is to have contingency plans for glitches in the system, in addition to exterior elements, Abhilash stated. Awarding sellers and serving to them helps build belief, he added.
(Edited by Ramarko Sengupta)
An enormous shout out to our Future of Work 2020 Sponsors: Alibaba Cloud, Larksuite, Vodafone Idea Limited, Gojek, Adobe, Udaan, Pocket Aces, Junglee Games, ShareChat, Open, Vesta Space Technology, Maharashtra State Innovation Society, Kristal.AI and GetToWork; and our Knowledge Partner: Ascend Harvard Business Review.
