Social commerce is a form of e-commerce that supports social and online media. It uses social interaction and user interactions for online buying and selling.
First used widely in China, it is now a trend in the e-commerce world and has also declared its presence in India. Riding on the back of social media, online videos and digital transactions, it accounts for 1.5% of Indian e-commerce.
By 2025 this share is expected to go up by 6%. The change was within 18 months and led by consumers in tier-2 and 3 cities. Even though the GMV of this sector is still nascent, it attracts many shoppers.
40% of the online shoppers have done at least one of their purchases through social media in 2020. In July, Flipkart decided to be part of this by launching Shopsy. As of now, it claims to have 2.5 lakh sellers on its platform.
The company is confident in its growth and even declares that the company will grow four times and clock 100 million users by next year. The platform is seeing majority of its customers from tier-2 cities, with the majority from North and East.
Their customer base is growing month-on-month, with 37% growth in November alone. The popular categories that attract new customers to the platform are beauty and general merchandise.
Along with Shopsy, there is Meesho and Glowroad in this field. While they have focused on reseller models, others took a different route by collaborating with creators and live commerce. This creates an immersive shopping experience for users.
The major name in that field is Myntra. It uses influencer and content-led commerce models. By this, they expect to use inspiration and aspiration from people who are exposed.
They launched Myntra Studio for this purpose but went a step ahead in November by launching MLive. The purpose of this new platform is to provide consumers with advice and answer their queries descriptively.
Brands such as HRX and Puma, who are looking for an interaction with their consumers, hosted live sessions with the consumers during Myntra’s year-end sale.
At the same time, short video platforms have also cashed in on this trend. Roposo, a short video platform of Glance, launched creator-led live commerce in October. Because of this move, it has access to nearly 500 D2C brands across categories.
Another platform to cash in is Trell, an influencer-led social commerce platform with a partnership with almost 1000 brands. 70% of its customers are from tier II and III markets.
At the same time, ShareChat’s Moj is going for a partnership with Flipkart. They consider this as a way to increase revenue for creators. They also expect this partnership to enhance the user’s experience.
But the creators should pay attention to a couple of areas, such as category expansion, long-term scope, logistics and frictionless customer service.
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