YouSaid · the spoken record

Kunal Bahl

lines on the record: 58
first: 2016-05-05
most recent: 2016-05-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“is the future. We are not that concerned by this part of the guideline either. And that's probably why, interestingly, MRP and other markets is minimum retail price, while in India it's maximum retail price.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think on the former front, the 25% cap is primarily so that people adhere to the overall guideline of 100% foreign investment allowed in pure marketplace model. I think this is just a check built by the government. I think on the no discounts, it's a bit unclear right now as to what does that mean? What is the process of enforcing it? But for the most part, what we are seeing is as the market matures, majority of the discounts or promotions on products are being funded by the sellers themselves. And it's the responsibility of marketplaces to offer them a lot of analytical support in a very simplified manner that enables them to price their products appropriately. Hey, if you price your product 20 rupees lower than this, you will see an increase in sales by 7%. That can be very motivating for a seller to say, okay, I'm happy to adjust that in my margin then.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Culturally, especially one of the things that we've noticed in China as well is that foreign market, I mean, every market probably loves discounts. But in foreign markets, it's a huge driver for getting people to actually transact.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When something is regulated, I would say telecom is regulated in India. There is an authority, we don't have anything like that. We have to adhere to different rules. And this guideline, not regulation that was released last week, is actually essentially a clarification of how do existing rules of India apply to e-commerce marketplaces. There was no new regulation as such. It was just a clarification. I found it interesting that they were specific about two things. One, the maximum percentage that a seller or a vendor can have on the platform. It was surprising from two fronts. One, that they would specify that if you build a true marketplace model, you would hope that there's not significant concentration to a seller. And then the second thing was around discounts and refunds. And it was sort of saying you cannot give any guidelines to the sellers in a marketplace on pricing, especially.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It significantly levels the playing field for all players. The question, I would say, in the US, at least the sentiment was, you know, why is this industry being regulated by government? Because you don't see that happening in the US. So I guess if you can say, how do you feel about the regulation? E-commerce in India is not a regulated space. There are different laws, whether it's a consumer protection law or labor law, different laws we have to adhere to.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be very confident that you're giving the other person the opportunity to confirm that yes, I've received the money. So there's always a lot of context and conversation around payments and commerce. So even on SnapTeal, buyers and sellers can chat with each other to get clarifications on products or resolve some issues.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and actually that's, you know, in the US as well as in China, we talk about how messaging is the next OS, you know, Facebook Messenger is putting a lot of resources behind that to sort of be able getting a lot of businesses on their platform so that consumers can message the businesses directly. Do you think how do you see that evolving in India? I think, look, in India, messaging is largely driven by WhatsApp. And given there aren't many APIs available right now, there's not a lot companies can do. But we do believe that within existing, let's say, commerce apps or payments app, chat will play a very big role. Messaging will play. So for instance, within our payment app, free charge for P2P transfers, we've integrated chat because we feel people, there's always context around sending someone money. You want to be very precise about the amount, what is it being sent for?”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing on the it's like you know our email behavior as well all of us I'm sure you know when we need to send 10 word emails we are okay sending it on mobile but when we need to draft like a two-page email we draft it on our PC and people who have both demonstrate that similar behavior when it comes to commerce buying as well hence it's important to keep that in mind while building experiences”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's also interesting is Easy to get confused and start thinking that hey, that's the only user base that matters because that's not the case. And we see in this, this is what we see in our data over a period of time. People who have only mobile phones, they are okay. They do everything on their mobile phones. But there are many users who have both mobile phones as well as PC devices. And they have different behaviors on both things. Anything that is far more impulse driven where you can just have a look and make a purchase decision. People are okay buying on the mobile. But there are many things which are very research oriented purchases where, hey, if you want to buy, let's say, a laptop, you want to go read reviews, compare things, go into specifications. And it's almost a very deliberated purchase, which people feel far more comfortable.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not that everyone already had PCs and internet access, and now they're getting a mobile phone as a second screen. A large chunk of the growth is happening where people have mobile phone as their first access point to internet.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to give consumers choices. There are still, we are getting 25% of our orders on our website. You can't tell those consumers that, sorry, we are not open for business. We want to take the complexity upon ourselves of how to manage a mobile site, a mobile app, and a mobile and not tell consumers that, hey, we don't have time to manage a website, so we're going to force you to download our app.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About a quarter of our orders are still coming through 2G networks. So hence we've created a light version of SnapTeal's mobile site, which ought to detect the connection and goes to a lighter version if we know that the bandwidth is low.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we've seen is that still a lot of users are browsing at least 25% of our transactions are coming through mobile sites because many of the phones, not everyone, unlike the US, has an iPhone in India. Many of the phones are $100, $150 phones, don't have a lot of memory or processing power.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I would say people start buying online while in their teens in India already, but the core audience is 20 to 35. Originally, in India, it used to be very male-centric, e-commerce buying, but over a period of time, we've seen a very, very healthy gender mix.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think we are seeing leading indicators to the same effect in India as well because free charge processes, million transactions a day, which is a lot by Indian standards, and with very, very high retention of cohorts. And those users over a period of time are becoming transactors.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I almost think of it as a second inflection point in e-commerce growth. Like, you know, in the US, when eBay acquired PayPal, it actually helped drive growth online much faster because now you have removed even the last leg of friction in the entire transaction. Because before, you know, payments were not seamless. In India, it was cash on hand here. If you're a local marketplace, you have to meet up and then make sure that you have a cash. It's not a cash economy. So you literally had to go to the ATM and get cash and then exchange the good versus when eBay acquired PayPal automatic now like it was just a one-time setup. And so that actually helped drive growth, which was counterintuitive to a lot of people because in general, if you think of it, you think of, oh, they put payments and monetization. Is it going to impact my growth in the e-commerce marketplace world? It actually helped drive growth.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But people do have bank accounts. It's just that COD was so prevalent was because people didn't trust online portals. And now as trust increases and as friction goes down, more and more people are adopting digital payments.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's called Verified by Visa. And so what we did with free charge is very similar to what Alibaba did with Alipay or eBay did with PayPal, where Snapdeal became the anchor merchant for free charge, which has a wallet 30 million verified addresses, 20 million stored cards, which is a lot by Indian standards, and tens of millions of existing customers. make all payments one tap”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our view is that one of the big reasons why e-commerce didn't grow as fast as it could have is because of the immense amount of friction that exists in digital payments. That's why cash and delivery was so high, like going up to 70, 80% at one point as a percentage of all transactions, because it was just very painful. We have like an additional factor of authentication needed in India for digital transactions.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and coming to payments, you know, that's an interesting topic because if you look at the US, credit card penetration is really high. And we probably had smartphone evolution came as the second stage, but India is different. More people have mobile phones than they have credit cards. So how is the mobile payment and the wallet landscape sort of evolving? And you recently acquired free charge and would love to understand how that's sort of playing into the ecosystem.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But at the end of the day, if everyone's unit economics are good, that's in general good for everyone. And your ability to innovate on things like supply chain, on payments, many of which require very significant local context around infrastructure and technology. We have not seen large global players demonstrate that.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nationwide. I think that's a structural advantage for the Indian market, which will ensure that in perpetuity, the economics of e-commerce in India will actually be quite good. Because as people buy more and more high margin stuff and more discretionary items online, the cost of shipping is not going to become higher.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the key is one, you focus on only on problems that are specific to India as a company. Any big multinational company can't focus all their energy, all their resources, however vast those may be, only on one market. Our speed of execution is materially going to be higher and faster than any market player which has a very large global mandate. Secondly, we've seen experience after experience of entrepreneurs winning in the end. Thirdly, I think deep understanding of the Indian market.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's actually really relevant because the broader context there is a huge growing middle class in India and you are sort of tapping into that when you talk about reaching those other audiences. But I'm glad you brought up the point about capital because I do want to bring this up unlike China or other places where there's heavy regulation around who can come in and now obviously there's been some recent rules around foreign direct investment, but putting that aside for a moment, how can people really compete when they're competing with say players like Amazon who have very deep pockets and can do a lot with a lot of capital. So how do you navigate that tension?”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think there was like a 10 year journey where one company executed really well. Whereas if you look at the Chinese market, there are actually a lot of B2C players. There's not just one. I think the same dynamic we are seeing in India, where you have multiple B2C players, each one potentially and hopefully for them, catering to a large but specific segment of the market. For us, we built a lot of supply chain capabilities in tier two markets, which enables us to get to places of the country where others don't. So I think there is competition, but it's very important to know what are your focus areas.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think at least as we've observed e-commerce around the world, we've seen that C2C tends to be a winner-take-all in most markets, like even in the US, you have one C2C player, eBay. In China, you have one C2C player, which is Taobao. Whereas B2C, you tend to still have many, many players. I think US is a little unique.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That has been something which is very interesting in India. And for someone who has followed the e-commerce space closely, if you look at the US, Amazon is both first party and third, you know, it has third-party marketplace, which is now bigger than the first party sales. They are by far the number one player. You look at China, Alibaba is the market leader. And I've always been curious, why is it different in India today? We had maybe close to a thousand competitors, came down to 50, but you still have at least three or four strong competitors in the space today, and I've been curious as to, is the Indian market different? Is it a take-all market?”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think this also, like the supply chain inefficiencies, can be an opportunity, as we've seen in other markets, like Russia, right? Our zone has the same problem of the mom and pop retail fragmentation. And they, in fact, used, if I remember right, the mom and pop stores to do the deliveries in certain cases. So sometimes you can find ways to sort of take advantage of those inefficiencies to deliver a better overall service”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also controlling doesn't necessarily mean owning. You can choose to own and build certain parts of the supply chain because there aren't existing high quality service providers, which is the case for some parts of the supply chain in India. But for certain parts of the supply chain, we work with existing incumbent players, but mostly the good ones, and create an incentive structure that enables them to deliver great service quality.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What that means is just for supply chain, when once you build end to end technology, from the time a merchant gets an order, how do they ship it, when do they ship it, who do they give the packet to, how's the tracking detail of the packet from the time it leaves from the merchant, reaches the consumer. When you control that entire end-to-end technology, you have far more data of what's going on in the system. And even though you may not be the person, for example, the sellers are selling the product, but you know exactly how much time each of the merchants is taking to ship a product. As a result, you can tell that, hey, if some certain merchants are not shipping the product in a day or in two days, which is what consumers expect, then you need to do something about it. So I think just having your technology span the entire stack can give you a lot of control over consumer experience if you do the right things.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Question It's a combination. Sometimes, if something's already very good, then you may need to replace. If something's not already very good, then you may need to build for the first time. And that also becomes very important. So it's a little bit of building, building some of the pieces that were missing in India because for the longest time, retail was not organized, e-commerce was not organized, etc. And secondly, we feel people many times underestimate how much control technology can give you rather than just physical infrastructure.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's not inventory proper, but like a holding warehouse. Essentially So, when you're doing this sort of full stack end-to-end fulfillment, one of the arguments we make about a full stack model in general is that allows you to control the consumer experience. So you can then provide that and you have that control for your brand for everything. But at a certain point, you're practically replacing a lot of things. I mean, are you then now replacing existing mail delivery services in order to create that? It comes on time. Like how do you navigate that landscape?”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of stuff, which includes building a lot of infrastructure to pick up products from sellers, bring them to our huge network of fulfillment centers across millions of square feet of space across the country where products sit there, the products are still owned by the sellers, and then the product is shipped out when the customer places the order.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the India of today is very different from that India. A lot has changed, but Anu's observation is correct that India does not have the same underlying infrastructure around supply chain and logistics that the US has had for many, many years. Now you could see it as a challenge or you could see it as an opportunity. We see it as a great opportunity. So most marketplaces in the world allow the buyer and seller to interact directly and manage fulfillment amongst themselves. Our view was that for the consumer it doesn't matter whether we are a marketplace or a first party inventory-led e-commerce business, they care about great experience. They care about do you have what I want? Do you have it at a price I like? Will you deliver it on time? If I have a problem, will you solve it in a frictionless manner? That's what a consumer cares. So what we've done is done a tremendous amount of innovation and investment in building long-term strategic capabilities around supply chain.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And to add on to it, my personal experience in India is that when we used to mail things when I was a child, things would not end up in the package. I remember sending my cousin in India a little mixtape. I mean, this is back when there were cassette tapes. And by the time it actually got to her house, there'd be an empty envelope. So to me, this notion that you can actually deliver products and have them show up without significant shrinkage is like so mind-blowing because when I was”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of the things I'm fascinated by is how challenging logistics and supply chain are in these markets, both China and India, for example, whereas I think Amazon in the US didn't really, I mean, they obviously did a lot by bringing in fulfillment by Amazon and stuff. But when they launched their first party sales, right, when they launched with books, it was not that difficult. And I remember Bezos and his interviews has said that they went to the largest warehouse, which had books. And when people placed orders online would drive and take the book from the warehouse, take it to the UPS, and get it shipped, right? Which is very unlike India or China where the delivery and the logistics system is so super fragmented, you know, thousands of couriers. And in fact, Amazon itself says that their delivery costs, for example, as a percentage of transaction in the US is a lot lower than in India.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The largest fashion brand in India would be maybe 250 million dollars. There are few that are at that scale. That's the scale, even though the market itself is tens of billions of dollars. The reality is that there are big brands account for a very small percentage of overall sales in any category.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“True, but I think because you have fewer brands already to begin with in India and 90% plus is largely unorganized retail, the marketplaces do have that benefit of making that more accessible versus the consumer landscape and the purchase behavior in the US is different.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think there's also a slight nuance. The reason why I'm Amazon US is still not, even though fashion is still pretty big, but it's a different story in India. It's also going back to the earlier point of unorganized retail. I think here we look for brands, right? And so that is also this reliance of the brand chooses how they want to distribute. There's also this trend of monobrands growing in the US and they setting up their own stores with Prada, Gucci, the Hind retailers are already doing that.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you have any famous people do that? Designers are like, I'm thinking of someone like Pernia Kureshi, someone like that coming in to curate a point of view, or is it just really active users that are doing that?”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's one way of curation. The second way of curation is where consumers and influencers know many of the trends. So they'll select different. So we have this concept of collections where consumers and influencers can come, create a collection of different looks, different products, which over a period of time people can follow those collections, they can share those collections.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think in India, the journey is still evolving. A lot of consumers are still maybe at the stage where if they get a good product, they're happy enough. But you're right. I think the next level of e-commerce buyers are expecting more and more and are aspirational. And our view of solving the creation problem, merchants in themselves solve the curation problem many times. Over a period of time, you start following a certain merchant. A merchant's not necessarily a brand only. A merchant's a person who's a seller. He could be or she could be selling seven different brands. And over a period of time, as a consumer, you start buying from a shop. You start liking the way their assortment, their selection of products.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's great. So before we switch to talking about the supply chain and the logistics aspect, I just want to still zone in a little bit more on the discovery aspect. One of the things that I find fascinating in India is this recent emergence of concept stores where you have, as an alternative to the single mom and pop store that supplies things, you have essentially the equivalent of a department store, but it's much more like a boutique in the US where they're aggregating local and indie brands. And it's kind of fascinating because you get to see like this wonderful texture of like beautiful design that's curated from a particular point of view. How do you guys solve the curation problem? Is it even something you have to worry about because you're not trying to actively curate and letting the marketplace curate itself? Because I think this is a problem Amazon would have on the fashion side as a fashion buyer, an aspirational buyer especially. I seek a curated experience. So I kind of want to understand what you guys are doing there.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the amazing thing is the amount of efficiency that e-commerce marketplaces are introducing in an otherwise very, very inefficient supply chain in India. Indian supply chains have been ravaged by middlemen historically. As a result, products become more expensive than they should. And the core manufacturer doesn't make enough money. So to take an example of a sari that's made in Gujarat, It'll typically be made for about five to six dollars. It'll be sold for about $30 in a market in Delhi. That same sari is sold on Snapdeal for about $12, including free shipping across the country. And only the four people who need to benefit out of that transaction benefit, which is the manufacturer, the person who shipped it, the person who sold it, and the person who bought it.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I also think the butcher's behavior of the consumer matters here, which is quite different from the US. So I grew up in India and had the benefit of seeing how I used to shop for salvars or suits, right? And you go to the most reliable nearest mom and pop store and it's seasonal trend and you look for the best designs. But I grew up in Coimbatore and even though it is sort of a big textile hub, you didn't have the luxury of getting all the varieties. So we would travel to Gujarat on vacation. For example, Gagras from there or buy Punjabi suits. But I think today marketplaces like yours have really enabled even tier two and tier three cities anywhere in India to sort of access that fashion. And you can use the seller ratings to sort of understand the reliability.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've seen very different behaviors when it comes to buying fashion. Many consumers, I'm not going to stereotype which type of consumers, a certain set of consumers, they know what they want to buy exactly. So they'll go in, they'll search for a specific type of product or a specific brand. They know their size. And they're just, you know, it's almost like you start with looking at the marketplace, you already know what you want to buy and you're narrowing, narrowing narrowing to get to what you eventually already know what you want to buy. Whereas there's a Click on one of them, you'll see more florals, and as a result, you almost go on a discovery path depending on what you're interested in.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But how do you still solve for the discovery aspect of things? Is that even a problem in this scenario? I'm just trying to get a little bit more context. How are people finding what they need and buying what they need? Walk us through a little bit about what that is like.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of aggravating. Experience very seamless. It's almost like the newest marketplaces are doing in the world in spite of the fact that they have very, very distributed supply. They still take ownership of the consumer experience and make sure it's superlative.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very interesting just going to the background of the question one of the things that we feel has evolved in the world is that for the longest time we feel there was a strong belief that the only way to create good experiences for users is by owning inventory. We think of these two as different problems. Owning inventory is one part of the problem, creating a great user experience is another part of the problem. To let you search for a brand that you want to buy doesn't mean you need to own the inventory of that brand. You need to know that the person is searching for that brand and you need to know that you have the assortment for that brand. And as a result, as marketplaces have matured and what our viewpoint on marketplaces is, is that you can have a situation of having extremely fragmented and distributed supply, but still create a layer of marketplace and experience on top of it.”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm actually fascinated by this from a design perspective because how do you then design for discovery or is it very utilitarian? Here are t-shirts, here are pants, here are, is there a sense of excitement? Because when I think of buyers, my guess would be that there are functional buyers and then aspirational buyers, people who are trying to buy because they're seeking a vision for an image of themselves. How do you optimize for these different scenarios? Because I can't even imagine a scenario like this where you can't search by brand, for example. Like how do you even look online? How do people discover things?”
2016-05-05 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source