Flipkart Marketplace to focus on cost efficiency

Flipkart Marketplace, the seller platform of India's ecommerce giant Flipkart, is focusing on cost efficiency to share with customers.

In an interaction with DH, Flipkart Marketplace senior director Nishant Gupta said the company is engaged in a multi-pronged strategy to bring down the cost for sellers.

"We have on-boarded over 1 lakh sellers on our platform across categories. Flipkart helps them to reduce spending on additional infrastructure or inventory using the company's technology capability, warehousing infrastructure and last-mile connectivity mechanism via Ekart," said Gupta.

Flipkart is banking on its seller partner ecosystem as one of the pillars to make its October festival sales programme, Big Billion Days (BBD), a grand success.

The ecommerce major wants sellers to achieve higher gross merchandise value (GMV) during the sales period. "Our sellers registered a growth between 2.5 times and 6 times during our last BBD sale and are expecting to improve further this festival season," Gupta said.

The company recently announced cuts across fixed fees, collection fees and shipping fees a couple of months ago. "Our restructuring efforts have helped 60% of our sellers to pass on these benefits to customers by lowering prices," he said.

Flipkart Marketplace primarily consists of four entities - sellers, marketplace, delivery partners and customers. "We help our sellers to do cross-selling and up-selling using analytical tools to overcome the reach out strategy for their targeted customers," he said.

Majority of the sellers on the platform are from the categories like fashion, home-related segments, electronics, personal care and large appliances. "Fashion is one of the largest categories where merchants are playing an important role. It includes footwear, accessories, jewellery, men's and women's wear, among others," Gupta said.

Besides providing sellers with insights on customer behaviour, the company provides customer feedback and reviews using natural language processing. "Our insights and data analytics help sellers prepare in advance for better product discovery," Gupta added.

Flipkart Seller platform is checking the authenticity and track records of the merchants to reduce product returns and fraudulent transactions. The seller's score is derived from the quality, product and past history through a Machine Learning-driven model.

Fragrance vertical

Flipkart also overhauled its perfume catalog, a top performer in the beauty category, in the run up to its annual Big Billion Days Sale. As part of the Project Authenticated, the company plans 180-degree relaunch in response to customers’ concerns regarding the legitimacy of luxury fragrances sold online.

The project promises a revamp of Flipkart’s portfolio comprising over 2,000 perfumes and a seal of authenticity on the listing image, a new feature that showcases brand-approved sellers.

This will accompany the launch of over 100 luxury perfumes, debuting international brands such as Shakira and Abercrombie and Fitch. The company will also add more exclusive partnerships and expand its collection of globally recognised labels in coming months, some of which has already kicked off with brands such as Jaguar, Police, Bvlgari, Davidoff, Calvin Klein, Guess and Michael Kors.

Some of the Indian brands that will be part of the portfolio are Titan Skinn and Fogg and Denver, among others.