Elanic takes fashionable route to popularise recommerce

Startup Showcase

The used goods market in India has gone beyond electronics, automobiles and furniture to include categories like haute couture, much to the liking of the young audience on the internet.

Bengaluru-based Elanic, which offers a mobile app platform for people to sell their goods online, specialises in fashion. Featuring a range of brands from Zara, Vero Moda, Hidesign and MAC to Ritu Kumar and Anamika Khanna, up to 80% of its listings are in the fashion category.

The platform is the brainchild of Abhilash Narahari, Aditi Rohan and Palkush Rai Chawla  , who in their own varied experiences found the factor of trust between the potential buyer and seller to be a bottleneck in the used goods market.

In an interaction with DH, Elanic Co-founder Abhilash Narahari said: “Trust is an issue when it comes to buying pre-owned goods because there is no measure of standard and quality. In trying to find a solution to this, we found that the trust is quite high, when individuals are members of a community. This led to the birth of Elanic, which is like an online community for buyers and sellers of used goods.”

The platform started off with women’s fashion listings simply because the community concept sits very well with women, who like to share and inspire fashion ideas.

Launched in November 2015, the Android-only app has about 65,000 monthly active users (MAU) and over two lakh downloads. “At present, on an average, we have about 90,000 listings, about 30% of which converts into sales,” said Narahari.

The company currently operates in 11 cities across the country, with its major pick-up points being Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. “We launched operations outside Bengaluru in May, and soon we expect it to take up to three-quarters of the total business, especially because tier II cities are found to be relatively active buyers. We currently enable deliveries across 5,000 pincodes,” he said. 

The company works on a commission-based revenue model, wherein it takes a standard 10% commission on all sales. Although it enables returns on purchases, Narahari claims that returns on the platform is lower than regular ecommerce standards. “The platform enables direct communication between the buyer and seller, which helps in better understanding of the product fit and appearance. Therefore, the need for returning a product is significantly reduced,” he said.

Having found that pricing is typically maintained at about 30% of the original price, Narahari notes: “People tend to sell those items that they no longer have any use for, and therefore pricing is substantially discounted, which further encourages buyers.”

Currently, the company is facing a pre-awareness stage in the market. “Once, people are aware of the concept of buying and selling in a community, they will tend to stick on. So our focus is now to spread awareness through digital media.”
 
On future plans, he said, “The value proposition of the platform remains ease in communication that is derived from the sence of a community. As the community expands, any category that it demands will be included.” The iOS version of the app is due for launch in the next six weeks, he added.