e-commerce
Jabong expects up to 1000 orders a day from ‘Next-Door’ service in a year
MUMBAI: With logistics one of the biggest challenges in the country, physical delivery of products is not feasible in a number of villages and rural communities. Coming up with a solution to the concern and an opportunity to increase its consumer base, one of India’s biggest fashion retailers, Jabong.com has come up with a new ‘Next-Door’ service.
The service will enable customers to pick up their order at the nearest coffee shop, petrol station or tour operator. The trial for the pickup service is going to start soon in 39 towns, including Murshidabad in West Bengal, Chandausi in UP, Dahod in Gujarat and Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir.
Talking about the new initiative, Jabong’s cofounder and managing director Praveen Sinha says, “This will open channels for the consumers in the rural areas. The pilot for the pickup service will be launched in 469 pincodes and 114 pickup points.”
Piloting the most extensive initiative of its kind by an Indian company, the Delhi-based online fashion retailer, Jabong.com gets about 55 per cent of its revenue from non-metro centres and Sinha expects a double digit contribution in sales from this new scheme once the services scale up.
“We are expecting about 20 orders a day in the first round of the service while anticipating it to go up to 200-1000 orders a day within a year,” he adds.
While the revenue model for the new collaboration is still undecided, Sinha said that it is most likely to be a mixture of giving some per cent out of the revenue to the partners or on the number of orders it receives. It will find a balance between the two so that no one is at a loss.
With 700 per cent growth in mobile usage, Jabong is banking more on the smart phone users in the non-metro regions for the success of this new venture. At Jabong, mobile users now contribute 25 per cent of its orders and Sinha expects it to cross 50 per cent in the next five years.
Even though Jabong declined to share financial details about the partnership Sinha reckons, “The company is growing 100 per cent year-on-year and was valued at $26 million in the month of December 2013.”
Since e-commerce in India is still booming, 60-65 per cent of its customers use the cash on delivery (COD) mode of payment and according to the co-founder, it will still be open to the customers in the pickup service launched by them.
E-commerce sector companies are now beginning to experiment with newer techniques, mergers and acquisitions. While companies like Flipkart-Myntra are already in collaboration, Jabong is not currently looking at any mergers or acquisitions but is not closed to the idea.
E-commerce space in India has been growing like gangbusters with an annual growth rate of 56 per cent. Over the past four to five years, competition from online retailers such as Flipkart (in books, music and electronics) and Myntra and Jabong (in apparel) has hurt physical retailers. Commenting on the advancing E-commerce industry, Sinha states, “Indian e-commerce space will increase up to eight times by 2018-2020 to $30 billion.”
e-commerce
Instamart and Duolingo launch street spell check campaign for Instaprint
Duo the owl fixes signboard typos across cities to showcase instant printing.
MUMBAI: If spelling mistakes had a sworn enemy, it might just be a bright green owl with a printer. Instamart has teamed up with language learning platform Duolingo for a quirky nationwide campaign that turns everyday spelling errors into a public spectacle while promoting its instant printing service, InstaPrint. The playful activation takes aim at the many misspelled shop boards and public signs scattered across Indian streets. From “saloons” that promise haircuts rather than drinks to menus and posters peppered with punctuation mishaps, the campaign sends Duolingo’s mascot Duo on a mission to restore linguistic order.
Armed with Instamart’s instant printing feature, Duo prints corrected versions of the mistakes on the spot and pastes them over the originals. The result is a series of humorous street interventions that have quickly begun circulating on social media.
Photos and videos of the grammar correcting owl have been widely shared online, with amused users reacting to the unexpected spell check patrol. One user joked, “Ab ayega na maza bhidu,” capturing the internet’s delight at the unusual campaign.
Behind the humour lies a practical message. The activation is designed to showcase the capabilities of Instaprint, Instamart’s printing service that allows users to print documents and posters almost instantly.
The company says the feature is meant for everyday needs such as printing resumes, visa documents or last minute posters without the usual scramble to locate a print shop.
Instamart introduced Instaprint in 2025 across select metropolitan cities including Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi. The service allows users to order printed materials directly through the platform, extending the quick commerce model beyond groceries and household essentials.
By combining Duolingo’s famously persistent owl with India’s street level spelling quirks, the campaign taps into the internet’s long running fascination with grammar mistakes while demonstrating a real world use case for instant printing.
After all, in a world full of typos, sometimes what you really need is a quick printer and a very determined language teacher.
