Bengaluru-based Shalini Subramanian is a product of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and is a designer by profession selling her products in Bengaluru and Hyderabad under the label Plantation House Clothing. She said, “I was in the process of constructing a webshop for my brand Plantation House, when a colleague of mine whose design sense I trust implicitly, recommended that I use Shopmatic to do so, instead of spending on developer costs and site construction costs. I am now working with Shopmatic and finding it an incredibly easy interface. The entire back-end of enrolling with payment gateways and courier services, both at discounted rates, is all taken care of,” she said.
Shenaz Bapooji, chief marketing officer, Shopmatic, Bengaluru, said, “Shopmatic provides an online opportunity for novices like housewives, making ladoos for instance, to turn this hobby into a business. Most of them don’t know about online advantages and reach or don’t know where to start or think it’s too expensive.” We did extensive work across cities, issued pamphlets etc. to reach out to them. They have a subscription model `1,300-1,400 for the entire range of services. We want to democratise the technology of selling.
As Shalini said, “The cost of maintaining the site is incredibly low. I only need to manage my inventory, and concentrate on the design and not burdened with the nitty gritty details of the backend.”
Shopmatics which is headquartered in Singapore, launched in October and opened up its platform in January 2016 has currently 2,500 customers using the platform.
They range from Harley’s Corner that sells dogfood, to FemIndian for authentic ethnic wear to Olive by Design that makes gift boxes and One Feet Farm that helps people grow mini gardens.
Shopmatics has tied up with the CAIT that gives them access to 60 million merchants across 40,000 affiliates, enabling them to target small merchants, listed on the ‘e-Lala.biz’ marketplace, whilst their association with PayPal will provide a platform for businesses particularly millions of SMEs to grow their business globally, said Ms Bapooji.
Source: The Asian Age