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May 8, 2016
Richa Maheshwari, The Economic Times
Bengaluru, 8 May 2016
Ecommerce
platform Snapdeal has integrated UrbanClap inventory in its Android
mobile application to launch a personal services category, which will
help consumers book services ranging from beauty services at home to
wedding photographers.
Anand Chandrasekaran, chief product
officer at Snapdeal, tweeted on Sunday: “Urbanclap 80+ services live on
Snapdeal android app, joining Zomato, redBus, Cleartrip and
Freecharge.”
In March, Snapdeal had launched a pilot programme
under which it tied up with Redbus, Zomato and Cleartrip, allowing
customers to book bus tickets, flight tickets, hotel tickets and food
directly on the application. UrbanClap is a mobile marketplace for
services ranging from house cleaning and plumbing to yoga training,
beauty care and interior designing.
Such associations give
companies like UrbanClap, Cleartrip, Zomato and redBus access to
Snapdeal’s user base. Snapdeal gets a commission for each booking made
through its platform.
Since personal service is a high
frequency category, the tie-ups will also help Snapdeal increase the
number of transactions on the platform. Air ticket bookings launched
through Cleartrip is a large gross merchandise value (GMV) category,
while food ordering through Zomato is a high-frequency category.
“Horizontals
are looking at monetising their user base with a focus on GMV and
repeat use cases. As funding environment becomes tougher, growth in
these metrics will stand out,” a Snapdeal investor had said in March,
requesting anonymity.
Recently, the Delhi-based ecommerce
company tied up also with real estate developers such as TVS Emerald,
Provident Housing and Runwal Group to launch real estate and financial
services on its website.
The commissions received on such
transactions are not clear. GMV is the overall sales by merchants on an
ecommerce platform, without factoring in discounts, out of which an
etailer gets 5-20% as margin on an average.
According
to experts, ecommerce players are experimenting ways to monetise
traffic through fewer cost-intensive models. “These are
service-oriented offerings, which won’t take up any extra cost in terms
of physical space or logistics and, hence, these players will make a
better margin out of it,” said Devangshu Dutta, CEO at retail
consultancy firm Third Eyesight.
(Published in The Economic Times)
