DYANPRASARAK MANDAL’S COLLEGE

of art science & Commerce

E-COMMERCE
by

Prasad Kamat

Roll no.14

M.Com I

(2010-2011)
 Flipcart.COM
Introduction

What happens when two people with a strong techno-commercial

background and a passion for books get tired of poor services of the
limited number of online bookstores available?! Well, they join their
hands together and establish a kind of online retail prodigy that
begins humbly but soon becomes one of the most popular digital
book store of the country selling at least one book every single
minute!

Case in point- www.flipkart.com, a name that needs no introduction

but for those who don’t think books are really their best friends,
Flipkart is the largest online book store of the country selling more
than 5lakh books in the past two years and has grown ten times
over the last one year itself. Flipkart is an excellent example of first
generation entrepreneurs identifying a business opportunity in an
age old industry and using the internet as a medium to give it
renewed scope for thriving.

The company was started in 2007 by former classmates in IIT Delhi

and later colleagues at Amazon.com, Sachin Bansal and Binny
Bansal. The genesis of the thought to set up Flipkart came from the
bad quality service provided by other digital book stores. As Sachin
quotes- “Our business opportunity was to do better than our
competition in terms of ‘service’. Hence, our main mission was to
focus on customer service”. He continues, “As a start-up company
with ambitions in the e-commerce domain, we had to choose a
category that could facilitate getting started quickly. The low
transaction size (as low as Rs.100/- or even lower) helped induce
customer trials. With our strong technology background, we could
keep the initial costs low.”

So while a strong and intelligent technology helped in keeping the

operation cost low, customers were attracted by smart business
strategies like free shipping and offering extremely low cost books
on the shelf as a minimum risk purchase.

Like any other start up, there were a number of challenges to be

faced by Flipkart also. Suppliers were to be sourced, distributors
were to be enlisted and employees were to be constituted. Apart
from that, getting noticed amongst the existing competition and
establishing your difference was also a major challenge.

Flipkart established its biggest USP as good customer service and

offered advantages like very low costs, no hidden charges, free
shipping and a very timely delivery. It developed a streamlined
business process free of any bumps and kept the customer at its
center. Sachin and Binny themselves being Computer Science
graduates helped in facilitating the technological process. Their work
experience at Amazon.com furnished with the necessary homework
required before establishing any business. Thus began Flipkart.com,
well prepared and well equipped, aiming to become a complete e-
commerce operator.

Once the company is established, up and running, publicity or

marketing becomes the crucial factor deciding on its fate. Believe it
or not, in case of Flipkart, rather than opting for more expensive,
bold marketing tools, the company chose to publicize only through
word of mouth with the help of friends and family initially! It even
opted for more conventional methods of offline marketing like
distributing pamphlets and participating in trade fairs etc which
gave a mixed response

Later, Flipkart advertised through Search Engine Marketing (SEO)

and even through popular social networking sites like Facebook and
Twitter by sending Promo Codes to communities established on
them. All the efforts combined soon started giving fruits and the
portal started receiving an increased number of hits everyday. The
easy navigation and user friendly offers attracted not only new
customers but also a large number of repeat customers.
Currently Flipkart has over 4 million titles listed, ranging across all
categories such as Fiction, Non-Fiction, Literature, Educational,
Professional and Technical, Religion and Philosophy, Entertainment,
etc. The family of book buyers on Flipkart is spread across the
country, with registered buyers in every city and small town today.
As a testimony to the superior customer experience, the company
has consistently recorded repeat purchase rates of more than 50%.

The book market in India is pegged at Rs10,000 Crore out of which

1% is the online book market share. Out of the overall online sales,
Flipkart currently has 20-25% of a market share. With the online
payments becoming more secure and more and more people
becoming comfortable with online shopping, the online segment is
growing almost by 50% year on year. The process involved in online
shopping for books has gone through drastic changes and is more
secure right now. With Flipkart, once the order is placed online – the
book is taken off the online inventory. In case of unavailability – it
will be purchased from a supplier. The Book will then get packed
and couriered on the same day. Flipkart is currently tied up with
around 12 courier service providers and also uses the Indian Postal
services to reach areas without courier providers.

Flipkart started as a very small company. To begin with, they had

three centers across the country without any funding. Like
mentioned earlier, in the past two years, the company has sold over
5 lakh books online and currently it sells one book every minute.
Last year saw the company grow leaps and bounds by ten times and
reach the position of number one online book seller in the country.
As Sachin beams- “We reached number one status in two years,
reached this position six months back. Also, being four times bigger
than our nearest competitor, projects our growth. We started off
small; today we have grown ten times over the last one year and
aim to touch the Rs 25 Crore mark by March 2010"

After reaching the number one company in the country for the
digital book market, Flipkart has ambitious plans for future. After
conquering the books segments, the company now has set its sight
on the online DVD, electronic gadgets and mobile phones market
and soon plans to diversify into that segment.
A look of Flipcart.com

Flipcart.com has designed with a beautiful store front with balanced

color and quick tabs. The site is very simple to browse & procedure
for e shopping is very simple too with flipcart.com

We can easily find the required product from flipcart.com by using

the categories or directly searching it by using search tab which can
be seen right at the top of the page, The books could be also
browsed by the author’s name also.

Further there are sub categories for searching books i.e. Books
home, New releases, complete collection, pre-order, Best sellers, &
recently sold. Also there is selectio0n of regional language available,
languages like hindi, tamil and so on

It’s very easy to shop with flipcart.com, let’s have a look for it
Procedure for shopping

To buy any product from flipcart.com you are required to follow a

simple procedure, as follows

1. Go to flipcart home page by typing www.flipcart.com in the

address bar
2. Select the required category, the categories available are

• Books
• Mobiles
• Movies
• Musics
• Games
• Cameras

(In this example lets select cameras)

3. Now select the desired product that you want to purchase
• Then it will provide you with the detailed information
about the product selected by you
• It will also tell you the status , whether the selected
product is available or not also the price of the
product and other cost attached with it i.e. shipping
cost and so on
• The time that could be required for delivery will be
also shown
• Even there is a space provided in order to write your
review about the product
• Also you can share the product info with your friends
by clicking social networking sites(link) i.e.
facebook.com or twitter.com
4. After selecting the product to be purchased, then click on the
“buy this now” tab in order to add the selected product to
shopping cart.

The shopping cart shows the information regarding the

purchases which include:
• Name of the item(s)
• Its description
• Price
• Quantity
• Other cost (if applicable)
• Total amount payable
 There is always an option available in the shopping char
for further shopping (i.e. to add more products in the cart)

5. After adding the number of purchases to be made to the

shopping cart , the user have to proceed further by clicking to
the “place order” tab,

• It will then ask for the log in information (for members)

• In case for non member s, they are required to sign up to
create an account first by providing required information
( name, address, email, etc) & then log in.
• Then click continue for further procedure
6. The next step is to provide the shipping address i.e. the
address where the user whishes that the product(s) to be
delivered.
7. The next is the order summery which will give the
information regarding the entire sale package
8. Lastly the payment details which asks for the mode of
payment to be selected, it can be:

• Cash-on-delivery

• Net banking

• Credit card

• Debit card

• DD/Cheque

• Other( as per the seller)

The user has to provide the information regarding the

selected mode of payment

Confirmation
At the end the confirmation page will pop up after clicking on
the pay tab & an email will be sent to the user giving all the
details about the transaction