How Shopperts Is Changing The Social Selling In India By Focusing On Variety Rather Than Bulk

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Please tell us about the founders

Dipanjan Chakraborty: Co-Founder:
Ph.d. CS, 19+ patents granted;
25 patents pending; 1 book,
5000+ citations (top-cited globally);
Executive Leadership @Cornell university
10+ years of experience in IBM research
Among the top cited mobile scientists globally

Sumit Mittal: Co-Founder:
B.Tech IIT KGP, MS Rice
20+ patents granted;
33 patents pending;
strong execution credentials
10+ years of experience in IBM research

Tell us about your product

Shopperts (www.shopperts.in) is a social commerce Startup working on an innovative concept of building a direct-to-crowd selling channel and sell products by utilizing the collective selling power of people. Thousands of homemakers participate with us every day and receive beautiful designs of apparels, home décor, artificial jewellery, men’s wear, women’s wear from brands meant for selling purposes. They promote relevant products to their friends, family and social network on Facebook and Whatsapp and collect orders. Shopperts proprietary deep learning technology makes it possible for the participating sellers to receive awesome products from all over the country that may be liked by their end-consumers. This is a novel opportunity for millions of homemakers and unemployed men who can take this as a part-time or full-time income opportunity and utilize their time meaningfully while being social, staying on their toes and growing their home business.

What problem are you solving and how?

Just like the way, Groupon created a channel between brands and people by exploiting the collective bargaining power of people; Shopperts is about creating an outreach network for small brands by utilizing the collective selling power of people. There is a big outreach gap between small brands who have great quality products and end-consumers who never get to know about these. There are 1000s of great quality apparels, home décor, artificial jewellery brands who manufacture great products that consumers can derive a lot of value from – only if they would be able to discover them. Shopperts technology bridges this gap by utilizing the collective selling power of a class of sellers.

Participating sellers promote the products to end-consumers in their social outreach via social media platforms Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram. Sellers do not need to own or stock any inventory. Consumers get an in-situ discovery experience of products that could be relevant for them, while browsing social feeds of various sorts, starting from news to jokes to updates from friends and family. They do not need to go to a shopping site or tune into notifications from 1000s of shopping apps to find products. Great quality products matching their taste will start to appear on their social feeds.

image Credit/ Source: Shopperts

Who participates? Who can participate in selling? This class of sellers comes from communities of homemakers mostly, fashionistas, people seeking part-time income, work-from-home opportunities. Shopperts calls these people “Trend Spotters” as they help their social network to spot new and trendy products that might suit their taste. Popular market research firm Zinnov estimates the current number of such sellers to be at 2 million in India, growing at 40% CAGR and is expected to touch 48 million by 2022. Shopperts believes that collective selling power of this rising class of sellers can make a great direct-to-crowd product distribution channel work for small brands while creating a complete experience for end-consumers to discover great products via social media platforms, where their eyeballs are.

Explain your business flow

Day to day schedule of a Trend Spotter
A Trend Spotter- typically a homemaker who resells products to her network, identifies products relevant to her customers and forwards the products via FB or WhatsApp. A typical Trend Spotter spends 4-5 hours in reselling every day, working in three timeslots.

In the morning after completing the initial household work.
In the afternoon after the lunch, when she gets time to communicate with her network and answer to their queries on product availability, product description, and prices.
In the night after getting free from the routine work of a standard Home Maker.

Each Trend-Spotter can earn INR 20000 or more on an average per month. But the scale of their business and income depends completely on the efforts and willpower to grow their business. Shopperts plays a strong role here in facilitating them with all the services required to sell. All our products are well-curated and we also take care of getting the orders delivered to the end-consumer locations.

What is the big picture of your startup? Is this Product leading to something bigger? If so, how?

Using Shopperts technology, we are creating a very new opportunity for millions of women and men to take up social selling as a part-time income opportunity. We wish to first bring the platform to millions of homemakers who look for financial inclusion – to contribute towards their family income, utilize their free time better while being social. We dream of a new and improved way through which selling is done, moving away from the tradition door to door selling to an online social model, with the focus on enabling consumers to discover cool products. Anyone who has 2-3 hours of free time and is looking to spend this meaningfully can register with us as a participating seller, grow her consumer base and start social selling. With women empowerment being a major drive throughout India, we believe Shopperts technology can fuel a significant growth of aspiring women wanting to work from home.

“According to Dipanjan- it is very common for Indian small and medium businesses to use WhatsApp groups to keep their customers updated on new products and close transactions over chats. We at Shopperts make sure our resellers get a hassle-free business experience with us.”

“We at Shopperts are targeting an outreach of 2 million Social sellers, which will be increasing up to 48 million social sellers in the next 6-7 years”