Startup eShopBox manages online operations of brick-and-mortar businesses

If you cannot beat them, join them. This has been particularly true in the case of traditional manufacturers and retailers trying to establish a Web presence. However, navigating the virtual world, for several traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, has turned out to be far more challenging than dealing with the real world bargain hunters. In solving Net issues of traditional businesses, Neeraj Choudhary, Ankush and Mayur Karwa (cousins) and Anant Bisht spotted an opportunity to start their own enterprise. They began by offering consultancy services to retailers on building an online presence and created Web portals for them. But traditional merchants were at sea when it came to implementing an online sales strategy. "Most of the merchants had a tough time handling their online operations—order and inventory management, curation, delivery logistics, customer relations, handling returns— even when they were advised on such matters," says Choudhary, 33.

Brick-and-mortar businesses wanted a complete solution to help them compete online, so, in July 2014, Choudhary, Bhisht and the Ankush Karwa founded eShopBox. The team decided to focus only on the fashion retail segment as it held greater potential. "eShopBox's end-to-end services allow clients to take care of all aspects of selling online, starting from listing, curating products, revenue generation, customer relationship management, among other things," says Chaudhary, Director and Co-founder. The company charges an average sum of Rs 55 per item shipped on behalf of its clients and 4% of the gross merchandise volumes it helps generate.

Handling sellers, the various channels of selling and customers was all a huge task and it was made all the more difficult because of the lack of awareness among clients about the workings of the online channel, say the founders. "A major problem we faced was getting on board manufacturers, who had been into B2B sales and had not explored the retail option directly. It took some convincing before we bagged them as clients," says Choudhary. Currently, eShopBox manages online operations of 150 businesses. Prominent clients include Duke, Renalove and TrendyVIVA.

Managing customer returns was also a major issue. "We were taking a major hit on revenues along with the merchants because of returns. To sort this out we formed our curation, merchandising and brand analyst team to assist clients in launching the right kind of products," says Choudhary. This team provides merchants fashion trend analysis and design inputs along with advice on brand strategy. "Sales, of some of our clients, increased by more than 20%, and returns too fell sharply," says Choudhary. The startup recently launched a retail business intelligence software, eShopBox insights, which allows its clients to monitor their products' performance, optimise their marketing strategies and plan product boquet and stocks, based on the consumer behavioural analysis. "This proprietary technology answers clients' queries related to their products' performance, revenues, transactions, inventory, and a whole host of things at a click of a button," says Choudhary.

Established with an investment of Rs 2 crore, put in by the founders, with a major chunk coming from Ankush and Mayur, eShopBox saw a revenue of Rs 13 crore in 2014-15. Its top line swelled to Rs 28 crore in 2015-16. Operations continue to be funded by internal accruals.

The startup, which won E-retail Solution Provider of The Year Award at the Indian Retail Congress 2016, is now focusing on clothing manufacturing hubs such as Ludhiana, Surat and Tirupur to fuel its growth. "These places have very good apparel manufacturers but, because they are far from the metros, they have a hard time launching their brands and products," says Choudhary. eShopBox will be partnering with these small manufacturers and assist them to expand their reach and plan their future strategy.

source:-http://retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/e-commerce/e-tailing/startup-eshopbox-manages-online-operations-of-brick-and-mortar-businesses/53465306

Eshopbox offering end to end solution for ecommerce ventures

Founded in 2012, by four partners Ankush Karwa - MBA and Law (Director, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, eShop), Mayur Karwa – IIT Bombay (Co-Founder and Director), Neeraj Choudhary – MBA and Law (Director, Chief Marketing Officer & Co-Founder, eShopBox) and Anant Bisht as an end to end e-commerce service provider eshopbox drives e-commerce for fashion brands and helps them provide a unique, brand-centric experience to the customers.

The company that started as technology solution provider to e-retailers to assist offline brands/retailers/ manufacturers target growing online market places, thereby helping them increasing target customers/ population has seen good growth. Initially, the concentration of the group was not on fashion apparel brands and services were open for all the products/goods which can be sold online, however, over a period of time after being into industry, management of Eshopbox realised that rendering technology service only will not help its customers in achieving the desired market share and presence at e-market place, thus it decided to provide end to end solutions and ensured that the clients associated are able to focus on core competence of manufacturing and services like marketing, product designing and reviews, product cataloging, logistics, warehousing, managing market place, operations, etc. were started. In an interesting conversation with team of Apparel & Fashion the co founders, Neeraj Choudhary and Mayur Karwal shared their journey so far and the vision of eShopbox for the next few years.

“Successful e-commerce is about having the right orchestration of various activities that delivers an end-to-end shopping experience. eShopbox enables that for brands,” said Mayur while interacting with team Apparel & Fashion. From concept to execution, eShopbox aligns the company’s creative energy with client’s business strategy to help brands deliver captivating online fashion shopping experience. eshopbox is led by experts with a rare combination of skill sets including technology, order fulfillment and marketing. “The team brings together these qualities and collaborates with emerging brands to deliver rich e-commerce action,” asserted Mayur.

eshopbox is a SaaS based platform that gives a competitive advantage to the brands in garnering the benefits of the apparel market expeditiously. Besides, it takes complete care of the clients from their nascent stage for receiving exposure on national and international level, coupled with speedy fulfillment. Thus, eshopbox can help the sellers achieve the edge.

The group recently announced a tie up with Roposo, India’s first discovery led platform. Roposo which is also based in Gurgaon, is a fashion focused social network meant exclusively for women. Beside Roposo, eshopbox is associated with Jabong, Myntra, Flipkart and Snapdeal and is working with well known companies like Saiesta, Anaphora, Duke, San Dee Impex, United Exim, etc.

On being asked about the vision of the company in next few years, Mayur replied, “Our vision now is to become the largest data warehouse of the fashion industry. Apart from the services, we offer software to our customers “Eshopbox insights” which is a real time dash board view of their online business.” Basically it gives information about the merchandising, and help suppliers in deciding pricing for the product, planning the required stock levels, get information about the previous lot of the products (fabric, Colour, category, design, market data about demand of different styles & categories, etc. which helps in maintaining the quality of product), complie date-wise data about discounts on various market places, etc. which will enable clients to “work on the business” without wasting time on such information which is readily provided by Eshopbox. “We insist our customers to create a range of products as they are not just selling their products, but “creating a brand and goodwill”,’ averred Mayur.

While venturing with any aspiring brand idea is, client will take care of the product and Eshopbox will be doing merchandising for them. Eshopbox E-commerce Private limited, reported a QoQ revenue growth of 77% with 3 fold YTD growth. The company has added 65 new clients in current financial year, increasing the total client base by 200%, this coupled with 28% increase in average revenue per client is expected to result in 3 fold growth for eShopBox in current year. Also, number of orders served per month has increased significantly over previous year. With this growth trend, additions to client base in later half of current year and increasing average revenue per client, company is conjecturing 5 fold growth in next financial year. However, average return rate of 30-35% remains an area of concern for the management and is expected to be lower than 20% mark in following financial year.

In response to questions on company’s future plans, Neeraj Choudhary, cofounder at eShopBox who takes care of the business development mentioned that the company is focusing its sales efforts to on board large fashion brands bring for long term revenues. He expects revenue growth rate to continue in medium term at the level witnessed in recent past with increasing internet and mobile penetration, growing acceptability of online payments and favorable demographics.

Neeraj added “India has an internet user base of about 375 million (30% of population) as of Q1 of FY2016. Despite being the second largest user base in world, only behind China (650 million, 48% of population), the penetration of e-commerce is low compared to markets like the United States or France, but is growing at an unprecedented rate, adding around 6 million new entrants every month. With this increasing internet user base, India’s e-commerce market is likely to touch $38 billion mark in 2016, a massive jump over $23 billion in 2015. Buying trends during FY2016 have witnessed a significant upward movement due to aggressive online discounts, rising fuel prices and availability of wider & abundant choice”. On the other hand, m-commerce is growing rapidly as a stable and secure supplement to e-commerce industry. Shopping online through smartphones is proving to be a game changer, and industry leaders believe that m-commerce could contribute up to 70% of their total revenues. Fashion brands are expected to gain competitive advantage by association with end to end e-commerce service providers like eShopBox to enter a dynamic and growing e-commerce market.