E-commerce major Snapdeal on Wednesday re-launched Shopo, a mobile-based open marketplace which will allow small businesses to list their products without paying any commission.
Snapdeal had acquired Shopo in mid-2013 for an undisclosed amount. Businesses can now list their products on Shopo without submitting any document and long verification procedures and reach out to customers without paying Snapdeal any commission for the sale.
"We have launched Shopo, a mobile-based open marketplace that will allow businesses as well as individuals to harness the power of Internet instantly and at zero cost," Snapdeal Co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl told reporters here.
The aim is to bring one million such entities on the Shopo platform in the next one year and help them become a part of India's digital commerce ecosystem, he added. Individuals selling anything from cakes to jewellery can click photo of their products and list on Shopo for sale.
The application also provides a chat facility for customers to interact with shop owners. A seller and a buyer can choose a mutually convenient mode of transaction as well as delivery. The application is currently available on Android and Apple's iOS platform.
"Currently less than 0.1 percent of small and medium businesses in India have online presence. Shopo aims to build a platform to help millions of small businesses, home entrepreneurs, artisans and individual sellers set up their online shop in the most convenient way," Bahl said.
Asked about the revenue model and quality assurance, he said the company is currently focussing on bringing more businesses on board.
"As far as quality assurance is concerned, every seller will have a rating that will allow buyers to make informed choices. We expect this to be more successful in a hyper-local manner than national as people will be able to discover products in their neighbourhoods," Bahl said.
Snapdeal, on its platform, has over 12 million products listed across 500 diverse categories from about 1.5 lakh sellers.
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