Flipkart's social commerce arm Shopsy hits 100 mn users ahead of timeline

Top exec says about half of Shopsy's customers are new to e-commerce, market is large enough to onboard another 100 million users by next year on Shopsy

Flipkart’s social commerce platform Shopsy, launched in July last year, has crossed 100 million users this year, ahead of its target timeline of end of 2022. This has made it one of the largest such platforms in the country. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce, and more consumers are shopping online at a higher frequency on Flipkart’s Shopsy platform.

“We were targeting 100 million users on Shopsy by 2023 and then by the end of this year based on the customer traction.  But now we have already crossed that number,” said Adarsh Menon, senior vice president and head, new businesses (Shopsy, Cleartrip, ReCommerce) at Flipkart, in an interview. “Forty per cent of the new users being added to Flipkart today come via Shopsy. Few months back this was 25 per cent.”

Menon said about half of the customers on the Shopsy platform are new to e-commerce. He said the market is large enough to onboard another 100 million users by next year on Shopsy.

Flipkart has more than 350 million registered users in the country. The firm rolled out its hyper-value platform, Shopsy in July 2021 with the aim to become the go-to shopping destination for consumers from tier 2 and beyond markets.

The business to consumer (B2C) platform focuses on boosting local entrepreneurship and powering e-commerce for consumers across tier 2+ regions where users may face challenges around trust and navigation when it comes to shopping online. It is doing this by leveraging common messaging and social media to provide an assisted online shopping experience for consumers.

Also, Menon said that the customers don’t have to wait for various sale events to purchase products as the items on the platform are based on Shopsy’s value proposition of affordability and availability.

Despite reports about a slowdown in the consumption, Menon said he is seeing  that customer sentiment is good for shopping for the upcoming festive season.” It's quite clear that at times like this customers do tend to prefer shopping platforms that deliver value to them,” said Menon.

The firm currently has over 250,000 sellers on the Shopsy platform who provide 150 million products across over 800 categories. Fashion followed by home products, general merchandise, and electronic accessories are the leading categories for  the platform.

Over the past six months (February-July 2022), Shopsy has recorded a 2.2x growth in the number of units sold while its overall customer base has also increased by 2.2x. Today over 68 per cent of Shopsy’s customers come from tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

Also, markets such as Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra emerged as strong markets with a 2x surge in app installs and close to 1.5x growth in units sold from both regions.

Through Shopsy, Flipkart said it is  committed towards creating direct and indirect employment opportunities across the country. It said the platform provides a zero-commission marketplace, with attractive offers and a wide product portfolio.

Social commerce is expected to be about a $70 billion market opportunity in the next few years, according to analysts. They said digitally connected Indians spend an average of three hours per day online, of which more than two hours are consumed by messaging, social media networking, and watching videos. Millions of small retailers are finding innovative ways to sell directly to consumers through a variety of social formats, ranging from conversational commerce on chat platforms to video-led commerce to a vibrant social reseller community.

Shopsy’s chief rival is internet commerce firm Meesho. The SoftBank-backed firm recently said it is adding eight new vernacular languages to its platform in line with its mission to democratise internet commerce for everyone. The move comes just ahead of the festive season when millions of users from all corners of the country are expected to transact on the platform. Sanjeev Barnwal, founder and CTO, Meesho said that about 50 per cent of its users are new to e-commerce and have probably never transacted on such platforms before. Recently Meesho said it reached 100 million transacting users. Since March 2021, the transacting user base on the platform has surged about 5.5x while the assortment has grown 9x to around 72 million during the same period. Customers from tier 2+ markets have been key drivers of this growth, accounting for about 80 per cent of all shoppers.

Another social e-commerce unicorn DealShare recently achieved a GRR (gross revenue run-rate) of $1 billion for the year ended March 2022, a growth of 6.6 times over the previous fiscal. For the fiscal year ended March 2021, the start-up recorded a GRR of $150 million.