What you will find in this case Study?

1) About IndiaMart
2) Idea of B2B Marketplace
3) Business Model
4) Growth and Success Story
5) Marketing Strategy of IndiaMart
6) Social Media Campaigns

About IndiaMart
IndiaMart is India’s biggest online marketplace, connecting buyers with suppliers.
Being India’s leader in B2B channel, IndiaMart is currently number #3rd B2B
marketplace in the world.
This online channel started by Dinesh Agarwal in 1996 focuses on providing a
platform for buyers, who can be an individual, SMEs or a large enterprise.
IndiaMart offers a platform and tools to more than 2.6 crore satisfied buyers to
search from over 3.3 crore products and get connected with over 22 lakh reliable
and competitive suppliers.
The idea of B2B marketplace
The founder of IndiaMart Mr. Dinesh Agarwal was working with HCL America where
he was deeply impressed by the internet technology. He soon realized the potential
of internet in India and moved to India to bring this new technology to Indian SMEs.
The internet broke the geographical boundaries and brought buyers and suppliers on
a single platform in a cost-effective manner. Buyers from all over the world can get
Indian suppliers and manufacturers just through a single click of mouse on the
online B2B marketplace IndiaMart.
Business Model
IndiaMart offers a free service as well as paid membership to the users, mostly for
the SMEs. Registration is free of cost for the SMEs and as a part of the registration;
SMEs get registered over the portal and are listed among their peers in the industry.
As a part of registration, they also get a free website on IndiaMart domain.
IndiaMart has an option to upgrade an account to get a paid membership to get high
end results. The membership account gives more business options to the SMEs. The
company designs and creates web catalogues for the SMEs and provides them with
premium listing.
IndiaMart also works with the business model of pay per lead, which was first of its
kind all across the globe when it was initially started. Through this model SMEs can
buy a business lead from a buyer after evaluating its relevance for their business.
Once the user gets reasonable result from the PPL model, they can then buy the
membership plan at nominal amount. Through this model, suppliers have the option
to choose from the listed business leads and can then get back to them to increase
their sales.
Growth and Success Story
The company has more than 2.2 million suppliers listed on its website, with around
12 million buyers visiting the online platform every month. IndiaMart has reached to
this height with the dedicated hard work of over 3100 employees located in its 55+
offices across the country. No doubt IndiaMart has got their clients from all across
the world, from 200+ nations.
With the superior leads and suppliers, IndiaMart grew rapidly and as a result of
increasing buyers and suppliers, the marketplace grew gradually. According to the
company they have been growing between 45-60 % since their inception in 1996. As
the number of suppliers amplified, Agarwal very smartly twisted the competition
among buyers and suppliers.
Having its service option available in more than 100+ cities in India, the company
offers a wide section of value-added products and services to its 700,000 registered
members and nearly 5 million global buyers across various industries and verticals.
With the turnover of Rs. 65 crore, the company grew over 15 times in its initial 7
years. For the financial year 2013-14, the company generated a turnover of around
Rs. 200 crore. The company claims to grow at an average rate of 30 % YOY.
Marketing Strategy of IndiaMart
TV Advertisement: With a digital boom all across the country, IndiaMart has
featured Bollywood actor Irfan Khan to drive the primary message of “Kaam Yahin
Banta Hai”.
Social media marketing
#AaramKiTune campaign: IndiaMart with an ample presence over various social
media platforms, Facebook having more than 2.4 lakh and Twitter with more than
5000 followers, created the pre-buzz for the campaign. Its Facebook and Twitter
pages started puzzles around the new brand communication.

The campaign was started with the direct involvement of the customers. The users
on Twitter were asked to share one song which they always sing or hum to feel
relaxed. This campaign was started with 2000 followers on Twitter.
IndiaMart also started grand musical theme contest with its #AaramkiTune hashtag.
The contest was hosted over its various social media platforms including Facebook.
Other mediums included air medium that was radio transmission where IndiaMart
made the users aware about the Twitter contests.
During the campaign, the company came up with a cool mashup video where people
were singing their relaxing tunes. This added the much required energy to the social
media buzz.
IndiaMart is using social media effectively and is trying to connect with the young
audience most preferably through its various social media platforms and latest
campaigns. A simple and effective social media campaign like #AaramKiTune is
commendable from IndiaMart, especially when the majority of its target group is still
offline.
#IndiaKiKhoj campaign:

IndiaMart has most recently launched its “India Ki Khoj” campaign to celebrate
the spirit of entrepreneurship. Irfan Khan kick started the campaign through a tweet
which was then amplified through its other digital platforms. The campaign consists
of a TVC, Press and Radio promotion, and all other digital mediums.

What you will find in this Case Study?

1) About the company
2) About the Founder
3) How MobiKwik Started?
4) Marketing Strategy
5) Business model
6) MobiKwik’s Growth
7) Funding
8) Awards
About the company
MobiKwik, simply put is one of India’s leading Mobile Wallet companies, that offers
its users to use this virtual wallet to make any kind of payments be it online or offline,
at any of its 50,000 (brick and mortar) or 20,000 (online) merchants, just like a
physical wallet.

Some of their merchants include – Café Coffee Day, Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut,
PVR, eBay, Jabong, Snapdeal, ShopClues, HomeShop18, Naaptol, Pepperfry,
Fashionara, MakeMyTrip, BookMyShow, etc.

Personally speaking; the Electrical Engineer from IIT-D, likes to call himself a sports
fanatic and holds keen interest in playing and watching football. Additionally, he has
also taken the initiative to become the lead trainer, motivator and content contributor
in Janaagraha’s flagship training program called CAP – Citizen Awareness Program,
in his early days.

About the Founder

Bipin began his career soon after he completed his engineering from the Indian
Institute of Technology, Delhi in 2002.

He started his first job as a Senior Design Engineer at Intel in the same year. In his 3
year stint at Intel, he was in-charge of handling the Whitefield project which was also
known to be Intel’s first server micro-processor design, wherein he his tasks included
developing comprehensive hardware design experience.

Job as a Training Facilitator

In 2006, Bipin decided to take a rather unusual leap in his career and joined
Janaagraha as a Training Facilitator. For the next one year, he worked on to develop
a program that was known to be India’s first citizen awareness program whose
primary objective was to motivate the students and IT professionals in their youth to
take part in the democratic process beyond just voting. During this stint he also got
the opportunity to conduct a range of training sessions at places like Dell, NVIDIA
and many more.

Job as a SoC Architect

After working on the aforementioned projects for almost a year and a half, Bipin then
moved to Freescale Semiconductor as a SoC Architect in mid-2007. To simply
explain it, he worked on creating and analyzing performance models, developing
new use cases and at the same time, proposing new features for Motorola Chipsets.

One thing was clear in his head was that, he was meant for something big and
better, so then the only two things left in his mind were either to go and pursue his
MBA or start-up something of his own. But he took the latter option and began
envisioning his entrepreneurial venture.
And that is where it all began!

The Entrepreneurial Journey!

Having that decided, he began with the first one of the most important and
challenging tasks of finding a team which equally shared his dreams.

How MobiKwik Started?

After speaking to a lot of people and after getting a lot of rejections, he one day
stumbled upon an old flat mate of his from Bangalore, who immediately agreed to his
idea, after which, he also got in Sunali Aggarwal from East Village to partner with
them for user experience.

Now that he had it all – the business skills, the technical skills and usability in his
bucket, he chipped in a seed capital of around Rs.8 lakhs from his own pocket, to
begin the project. Most of the investment was spent on the main surrounding factors
like infrastructure, website, payment options, office space, etc. And finally in 2009;
founded MobiKwik!
Marketing Strategy
The company uses social media platform effectively for lead generation and
launches various offers to convert it into sales. At present, the Facebook business
page has around 7.9 lacs fans and Twitter witness over 55K followers. With the
lucrative and attracting contents and videos posted frequently, the company has
used effectively the social media platforms. YouTube page of the company has
around 1,628 subscribers. Google+ has 21K followers and Instagram has over 140
followers. Followers on Facebook are increasing in count day by day which is
making MobiKwik an India’s leading Mobile Wallet Company.

So what exactly was their Business Model all about?

All they had was a noble intent to offer customers a solution to free themselves from
the hassles they faced regularly when dealing with mobile operators or their
services.

MobiKwik in simpler terms was a model created to ease the payment problems that
were faced by online users every now & then in India.

MobiKwik was primarily founded with an aim to create an online store where all the
needs of mobile owners can be satisfied, covering all three major verticals – Voice,
Data and Applications.
All a user had to do was, add money once to MobiKwik wallet which later could be
used multiple times across functions, services, and service providers to make
payments. By this way, one could easily reduce the risk of exposing card details or
bank account details at multiple merchants.

They initiated the model with voice services like prepaid recharge for all operators
across India, data services (GPRS/3G top-ups) and plug n play mobile applications.

To make it even more accessible, they even launched an SMS-based recharge

model on the available MobiKwik balance for the people who did not have internet
service, along with a Kwikplan that leveraged one to an automatic recharge facility
based on their budget every month.

Now the other thing they realized was that most of the mobile services used to
function on a ‘push’ model basis that means the operator would push down the
services to customers and then the customer would select what they want. But
customers did not have the freedom to proactively go to look for their preference;
hence, limited choices and lower quality services.

To counter that, what MobiKwik did was it brought in an altogether a new ‘pull’ model
in the Indian telecom space, wherein one could recharge mobile, check out new
plans or offers, find premium apps.

The next obvious task for the company was to marketing. But just like every other
start-up with a tight budget, they were forced to be very calculative on where they
spent their money. Hence, word of mouth was one of the only marketing techniques
they could opt for, apart from social media of course.
Since then, there has been no looking back for them and their growth has been
tremendous.

MobiKwik’s Growth
The company broke even in 2013; and today with over 17 Million users and 50,000
merchants (retailers) and 20,000 merchants (online), One MobiKwik Systems Private
Limited, the parent company of MobiKwik has gone on to become India’s leading
Mobile Wallet company.

Its services now also include – mobile recharge, postpaid bill payment, online DTH
recharge, life insurance, electricity, landline and gas, etc. MobiKwik pockets a range
of reputed brands as their esteemed clients including – Café Coffee Day, Domino’s
Pizza, Pizza Hut, TastyKhana, JustEat, PVR, eBay, Jabong, Snapdeal, ShopClues,
etc.
Unlike most competitors or other Internet based companies, they are expanding from
the virtual world to the brick and mortar outlets to increase coverage of its mobile
wallet.

Funding
In the initial time company raised $250K seed funding and looking at the growth of
the company in 2013, Cisco Investments, American Express and the existing
investor, Sequoia Capital invested $25 million in Series B which was $5 million in a
series A round.

Awards
In 2014, MobiKwik won the mBillionth Award South Asia in the category of Mobile
Business.

Founded in 2010, Paytm started as a prepaid mobile recharge website. Currently its
business is not only limited to recharge but has expanded as online payment
platform including mobile recharges, utility bill payment, wallet payment and wallet to
wallet and wallet to bank transfers for many leading internet based companies like
Bookmyshow, Makemytrip, FoodPanda, IRCTC and many others.
It was founded under the implemented idea of Vijay Shekhar Sharma and has got
the first mover advantage in the mobile industry. The company has been backed up
by Alibaba group and Ratan Tata. The firm raised $575 million from Alibaba group
for a share of 25% in the company.

Paytm is growing faster and they have over 20 million registered users as per their
current data. Their website and mobile app has been transformed into a fully-fledged
e-commerce marketplace offering categories from electronics, mobile phones, sports
& health, home & kitchen, books, baby & toys and many more categories.

The app downloaded on various platforms has touched the mark of 7 million. The
additional features added like Bargain power which is not currently available at any
other marketplace and unified dashboard has made the selling and buying more
interesting. Monthly order of over 15 million is completed over here.
Success Story
Vijay Shekhar in his initial college days has started his own firm Xs! Corporation with
his batch mate Harinder Takhar which offers web guide services to the clients. They
received seed money of 20,000 from one of the Angel investors. They merged two of
their more friends with them and worked for the company till 1999 after that they sold
it to Living Media India for half a million dollar which is now the India Today group.

After selling the firm Vijay worked for some time in a company but soon got bored.
He had 2 lacks with him which was enough for him to start a company on its own. He
along with his colleague, Rajiv Shukla, co-founded One97 Communications Ltd, a
mobile value-added services company. But in 9/11 tragedy, their business crashed.
His partner left him. He was with no money now. He started using public transport,
lived on two cups of tea. It was again a hard time for him. His father asked him to
take a job. The whole family members were willing to get him married but no any girl
was ready to marry him!

For sustaining his life, he took up a job. But the zeal of doing something of his own
keeps his interest alive from inside. Observing the popularity of smartphones, he
decided to do something around it and in December 2010, he launched Paytm, a
mobile wallet. At present, Paytm has 50 million consumers doing 60 million
transactions a month and is expected to touch 100 million consumers till the end of
2015.

Paytm in February 2014 launched its mobile based marketplace and now recently
has launched a seller dedicated app with zero commission model.

Besides, Paytm has also contracted with IRCTC to make Paytm wallet as one of the
online payment option while booking a ticket. IRCTC processes around 180 million
transactions every year; and Paytm has a strong base of 60 million wallet users who
can use their wallet instead of using plastic card details. These wallet holders have
an access to shop over the app and pay with Paytm wallet across 21,000 merchants.

Over the next six months, the Noida-based firm is considering at 25,000+ tickets per
day using Paytm wallet on IRCTC platform.

According to a report, “Paytm claims to earn revenues of over $500 million now but
Sharma says this will jump to $2 billion by December 2015. Half of Paytm’s run rate
will then come from the m-commerce marketplace push. And the focus will be on
getting more users. Alibaba also echoed its view and Erik Jing of Alipay says, “We
don’t care about profitability. We care about SMEs, users on the Paytm wallet.”

Paytm has recently joined in the hyper-local venture by starting grocery delivery in
Bangalore. The hyper local market has raised more than $60 million over the past
two months from various venture capitalists.

Paytm has just shoot up its business as it has just raised a funding of $575 million
from Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group. In the same month, India’s
leading investor and businessman Ratan Tata has also invested in the company.
Paytm will utilize the fund in recruiting fresh talent, acquisitions, marketing and brand
building.
Gurgaon-based competitor of Paytm, Grofers grabbed an amount of $45 million
while PepperTap snatched $12 million from the investors.

The company is currently dealing in mobile and DTH recharge, bill payments, bus
tickets, data card recharges, e-commerce marketplace, payment gateway, Paytm
deals and coupons.

Vijay Shekhar said, “We do 400,000 orders per day, which is second highest in the
country after IRCTC”. Over 50% of the orders are from the mobile app making use of
the largest mobile commerce platform. An amount of INR 500crore is allocated for
marketing in the year 2015, “said the founder”.

Let me tell you about a fairy tale of two brothers who started off their business with
an initial investment of only 4 lakhs , how the angle touched her magic wands to their
business and how their companies net worth increased to 9900 crores in just six
years.

Yes, you are guessing right! It’s about Flipkart .com.

About Flipkart.com
Flipkart is an Indian e-commerce company headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka.
It was founded by two brothers Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007. In its initial
years, Flipkart focused on online sales of books. But it later expanded to electronic
goods and a variety of other products. Flipkart offers multiple payment methods like
credit card, debit card, net banking, e-gift voucher, and cash on delivery. The cash-
on-delivery model adopted by Flipkart has proven to be of Great significance since
credit card and net banking penetration is very low in India.
From a start-up with an investment of just four lakh rupees Flipkart has grown into a
9900 crores revenue online retail giant in just six years.
 Challenges faced by Flipkart during its
launch
 Getting tie-ups with major book vendors as they did not have an offline book store.
 Getting approval for the credit card payment gateway. Besides, they did not want to use CC
Avenue for its interface seems confusing.

How they coped up with the situation

 As far as getting tie-ups with major book vendors was concerned they somehow
managed to persuade them and as on date most of the vendors are supporting them.
 Since they were a self-funded startup and didn’t have an offline presence, it was really
difficult for them to convince but they eventually were successful in convincing Axis bank for
payment gateway.
[useful_banner_manager banners=24 count=1]

How their journey went on after the launch

Although the journey was quite challenging for them especially in building trust
with the customers, suppliers and so on however, they overcame it by
persevering in the face of challenges. In the beginning they started by identifying
people who could trust them and gradually went on building a good relationship with
them, which helped them in getting more customers through word of mouth and viral
marketing.

Besides, they even made a few assumptions regarding their marketing which when
went wrong they had to change their business model accordingly. Everything was
not so smooth for them initially. Till now they have changed directions quite a
number of times and have taken each mistake as a learning experience.

Growth Trajectory of Flipkart

They started out in 2007 by setting up three centers across India without funding and by
2012 they reached number one status. Today, the e-commerce company is four times bigger
than its nearest competitive company. The company aims to touch Rs 50 billion turnover by
FY 2015 on the back of increased penetration of broadband and the firm’s massive
expansion plans.

The most significant legs in their journey

The first leg: Flipkart started with selling books online in 2007
The second leg: In 2010, they added media, mobile phones and accessories to
their catalogue.
The third Leg: in 2011, product launches included cameras, computers, pens &
office supplies, computer accessories, home and kitchen appliances, personal care,
health care, gaming consoles, audio players and televisions. Flipkart also launched a
new Electronic Wallet feature the same year that allows shoppers to purchase credit
to their Flipkart account using credit or debit cards, and can subsequently be utilized
to make purchases on the site, as and when required.
The fourth leg: In 2012, product launches includes health & beauty products, Life
style products which includes watches, belts, bags &luggage. From June 2012,
Flipkart allowed people to buy toys, posters and from October 2012, Flipkart entered
into apparel retailing.

Aquisitions made by Flipkart.com

2010-“We read”, social book discovery tool
2011-MIME260, a digital content platform company
2011– Chakpak.com is a bollywood news site that offers updates, news, photos and
videos
2012-Letsbuy.com is India’s second largest e-retailer in electronics.
Flipkart has bought the company for an estimated US$25 million.

Business results of Flipkart.com

Flipkart’s reported sales as follows:-
IN FY 2008-2009->40 millions
IN FY 2009-2010->200 millions
IN FY 2010-2011->750 millions
IN FY 2011-2012->829 millions
In FY 2012-2013->1046 millions
As Internet usage in the country is increasing and people are getting accustomed to
making purchases online, Flipkart projects its sales to reach US$ 1 billion by year
2014 and aims at generating a revenue of 50 billion (US$1 billion) by 2015.
 Flipkart so far
 Ranks among the countries top 30 websites
 Customer Base of More Than 2 million
 30 shipments on daily basis
 Their daily sales has increased to 2.5 crores