MAM
ShopClues to get aggressive with its marketing activities
MUMBAI: Looks like the Indian e-commerce businesses are speeding towards rapid transformation. While giants like Flipkart and Amazon are busy making announcements about funding, other players in the space are looking at changing their marketing strategies.
ShopClues, an online marketplace has announced the launch of its end-to-end advertising and branding roadmap to gain top-of-the-mind recall in the Indian e-commerce segment.
The brand has already carved a strong niche for itself in the Indian e-tailing space with over 65,000 merchants powering an extensive selection of 5.3 million products across 3000 listing categories.
It is now ready with a full-fledged branding and mass communication campaign to further its penetration and recall in broader geographies and demographics. To achieve this objective, ShopClues has engaged partners across functions to lead its large-scale consumer engagement campaign.
Enormous Brands, headed by advertising veteran, Ashish Khazanchi, has been appointed as its creative partner. The media planning and buying activities have been assigned to Exposure which is headed by Rajul Kulshrestha. The public relations mandate has been assigned to Value 360 Communications, headed by Kunal Kishore Sinha.
A few months back, the platform got on board Shweta Jain as brand strategy consultant to kick start the accelerated mode of branding and advertising initiatives.
ShopClues co-founder & CMO Radhika Ghai Aggarwal said, “We observed early on that our country has millions of small merchants with interesting products and we Indians love to shop in local bazaars. This is the basic and defining essence of our product. At ShopClues, we’ve built properties like the Sunday flea market, wholesale, cash-before-delivery, factory outlet, keeping the orientation of our shoppers and their comfort zones in mind. We have an approach to merchandising which is unprecedented. Our build-up is focused on extensive unstructured products categories, offerings and unique cataloging.”
ShopClues claims to have spent less than US $10 million to reach the status of India’s fifth largest, while every other company in the top five list has spent an over ten times the amount.
While ShopClues covers a broad range of products, prices, categories, brands, and sellers, it specialises in non-standard categories, unbranded products or less-known brands, smaller merchants, and tier II and tier III cities.
Unstructured products account for over 75 per cent of the Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV). It is thus a combination of a discovery and transaction-enabling engine. In addition to strong traction and a very well-developed marketplace ecosystem, it also has an unmatchable cost advantage and rapidly improving fundamentals – the company is close to gross margin break-even and will be operating margin positive by March 2015.
MAM
Manappuram Finance appoints Sreekanth P V as group head – operations
22-year veteran from Bajaj Finance to drive efficiency and customer experience.
MUMBAI: Manappuram Finance just upgraded its operations engine because when customer delight needs turbocharging, even the gold loans get a smoother ride. Manappuram Finance Ltd has appointed industry veteran Sreekanth P V as group head for operations & customer experience at the grade of president. In his new role, Sreekanth will lead efforts to strengthen operational efficiency, enhance customer experience, streamline processes, drive service innovation and scale the company’s digital ecosystems across all business verticals.
Sreekanth brings over 22 years of experience in operations management, digital platforms, product innovation and customer experience within the financial services sector. Most recently he served as deputy executive vice president for digital platforms at Bajaj Finance Ltd, where he led the development of a unified app and web platform strategy and built a cohesive digital ecosystem.
Manappuram Finance, chairman and managing director V. P. Nandakumar said, “We are pleased to welcome Mr Sreekanth P V to the leadership team. He brings extensive experience in operations management, digital platforms and customer experience. As we continue to strengthen our operational capabilities and enhance customer engagement, his expertise will play an important role in driving efficiency, innovation and service excellence across the organisation.”
The appointment reflects Manappuram Finance’s ongoing focus on building a stronger leadership bench and elevating operational standards as the company scales its lending and customer engagement capabilities.
In a sector where every rupee counts twice, Sreekanth isn’t just joining the team, he’s the new conductor making sure the entire orchestra of loans, digital flows and customer smiles stays perfectly in tune.
