India’s largest online marketplace, Snapdeal is aggressively developing its big data platform. Well, theNew Delhibased e-commerce portal is looking to evolve from e-commerce venture to a technology firm by providing a suite of products and services.
As per a senior executive of Snapdeal, the platform will be open to the e-commerce ecosystem including banks, brands, market research companies, technology ventures and others to provide deeper insights of the Indian consumer behavior and help them prepare brand strategies and develop technologies that are related to logistics, applications and payment gateways.
Regarding the same, Ankit Khanna, Senior Vice President – Product Management, Snapdeal claimed that the firm has close to 25 million users and it aims to make their shopping experience more relevant.
It has to be noted that the e-commerce is still only 1 percent ofIndia’s $500 billion retail sector, but the segment is growing swiftly with a combination of larger mobile penetration, wealthier middle class and affordable devices. Also, numerous international brands including Diesel, Motorola and others have launched their offerings exclusively via the e-commerce portals such as Snapdeal and Flipkart as the number of shoppers purchasing via these websites is increasing.
Lately, Snapdeal crossed a billion dollar in gross merchandise sales as it caters to over 50,000 sellers and lures in up to 9 million daily visits. On the other hand, Flipkart works with its sellers by offering them information related to the market trends. It is claimed by the firm that this intelligence of the firm has helped them position their products to obtain higher chances of success.
The executive at Snapdeal did not reveal any detail pertaining to how they master the transactional data. He made it clear stating that they do not expose the absolute data, but only the insights.
The strategy used by Snapdeal is similar to that of the Chinese e-commerce portal Alibaba that uses big data to assist its small loan business. Back in August, Snapdeal announced Capital Assist that is an imitative focused to provide sellers on its platform the access to funding as they aim to expand their businesses.
