A couple days back I read this article on Medianama which shared that Amazon will soon go live  in India as a marketplace with Junglee.com, but a tweet  today morning  announcing that Junglee.com is live caught me by surprise.

Amazon, of course was expected to test waters in India this year but the whole junglee.com gig is away from most people’s anticipation of how it will all unwrap.

Amazon for the records is the the biggest global e-retail/e-tail giant which posted $17.43bn in revenues in last quarter of 2011 (35% more than the revenue for same quarter in 2010). The company net sales were up 37% compared with 2010.

Amazon is India

There was a lot of speculation particularly for the last six months about Amazon’s entry to India. Amazon as countless sources have shared, already have development centers in India and had started looking for talent for their fulfillment capabilities.  As per the current regulations Amazon is not allowed to open an online Multi-brand retail store, and can not make FDI  in India except for a single brand retail business, thus Junglee.

Amazon’s Junglee

Here’s how Amazon describes it

“Junglee is an online shopping service by Amazon which enables customers to find and discover products from online and offline retailers in India and from Amazon.com. Junglee organizes massive selection and multiple buying options from hundreds of sellers, and leverages Amazon’s proven technologies and millions of customer reviews to help customers make smart purchase decisions.”

For the uninitiated Junglee is like a Huge Brochure which lists  millions of products from thousands of vendors. You choose the product that you want to buy and then go the vendor site or call them to order as explained here

Here’s a look at one of the category(Books) page

Just one book, also I am not sure why am I being shown featured jeans when I categorically chose books.  Bugs.

Here’s a sample product page(for Paulo Coelho’s Alchemist)

Amazon apparently relies of it’s own site for Metadata (Product Description for ex) which in some cases can be really screwed up like for the book ‘I Too Had A Love Story’

The product description is picked from http://www.amazon.com/I-Too-Had-Love-Story/dp/8188575704 and is as far from the actual book description as it can be http://www.dialabook.in/books/i-too-had-a-love-story_1_12247.html

Scrolling down further is the review section. Most part of this section comes directly from Amazon.com

List of Sellers

Junglee.com for now has about 5 sellers for Books which includes names that probably feature towards the middle(and bottom) spots of a list of top 10 online booksellers in India. Almost everything from the list except Flipkart and Infibeam can be expected to list here.

Using Junglee as a Seller: Win Some, Lose Some

Junglee let’s online and offline retailers to list themselves and their catalogues for free and without any ongoing commission.

What it means for suppliers (especially small time indies) is that they get a chance to  drive traffic and sales from Junglee’s visitors and will convert some customers to direct. Over a period of time as in an online marketplace set up their ratings and reviews will determine how they fare in the long run.

The picture however isn’t all rosy. For established players like Indiaplaza (unless there is some non-compete or alliance agreement) registering on Junglee will give them a temporary boost in terms of both traffic and eventually sales but once Junglee starts running it will break its shackles and given them a run for their money by listing Amazon.in as the default/first choice as a buyer. Once that happens the customers will make the switch to Amazon (in place of a retailer they found a few months back) with the blink of an eye.

(http://services.amazon.in has more details on how to set up ads on Junglee.com)

Using Junglee as a Customer: All Profit No Loss

Junglee.com is another (but branded) shiny object for the scores of people who spend hours daily on the interwebs tweeting or facebooking. They know have one more place to spend time and compare prices. It will be helpful in finding alternative vendors for particular categories and helpful in finding product categories that have been literally out of the online sphere, stuff like Pet Supplies.

Within a span of months you’ll find dozens of people selling Pet Supplies and the likes on Junglee. What this means is that consumers won’t have to wait for their favorite e-commerce site to add some category or a stand alone/vertical service around the category to launch.

What’s up with Amazon?: Junglee is the shortest(and smartest) possible path

To begin their tryst with India  Amazon is trying to be the front end(influencer) of the purchase funnel in stead of starting being a back end service provider. It wants Indians to log on to Junglee.com to begin their shopping journey (they can or cannot decide to buy from Amazon) but eventually they’ll make it their in house offers compelling enough to get a huge chunk of the pie.

Here’s how it could unfold for Amazon. Junglee is essentially the market place of Amazon.com abstracted and launched a special business for legal and other reasons.  In Amazon.com’s marketplace lot of vendors put their goods on sale and do most of the fulfillment too. Amazon however displays their products and collects the payment from customers (Think Ebay).

What Works Good For Amazon

1. Junglee will create an incoming line for new retailers to tie-up. Retailers will flock and list products instead of the company finding them using direct/in-direct modes of advertising or marketing.
2. User Data: Millions of people could potentially sign up and start using Junglee to discover new products and vendors. All the user and their shopping history details are now available for scrutiny
3. All Junglee’s set up  can eventually be replicated for Amazon.in’s market place feature
4. A sense of how business works. Deeper/Closer look at how the things work
5. Later they’ll start people for accepting payments and maybe coordinating deliveries (Customers buy a third party product from Junglee and Junglee home delivers a product which the third party retailer had in their office and sent to Amazon’s fulfillment center once they get an order). They stand to earn 2-10% commission depending on the product category and services they offer
6. Use all the Seller info to tie-up directly for Amazon.in
7. Based on user preferences start offering competitive prices and eventually *produce* them domestically

Having said all of that, Junglee is an interesting piece in the Indian e-commerce puzzle and it will definitely have an impact on the existing market leaders. Most Indians from what I understand would give an arm(or probably) a leg to switch to another cheaper vendor especially if it has Made in America tag on it.

What do you think?

While the film was great, I (and most others) didn’t know that it was inspired (not copied, ok?) from Hollywood film Patch Adams. The bad bit is that Vidhu Vinod Chopra and co didn’t even bother to give credits to the film or the man himself at the end of the film.

Me and my brother happened to see the film yesterday and loved it to tears.  The best thing about the film however is that it’s based on real life story of Hunter “Patch” Adams . There’s nothing more beautiful and inspiring than a honest pursuit of  simple philosophy which one holds dear.

My immediate reaction after finishing the film at 1:30AM was to read more about the real Patch Adams and here’s what I found. There’s indeed a  Gesundheit Institute (you can read more about it here http://patchadams.org/) and Dr Patch Adams is alive and still trying to revolutionize the system.

While some of us might expect that after two films by two of the biggest film industries (Hollywood and Bollywood) things would have changed for Dr Patch Adams and Gesundheit Institute for good but sadly none of that happened, no big donations came forward their way and their team had to struggle to get the project off ground.

This talk shares more details about the real deal

What’s disappointing really is the fact no big names and not enough smaller ones came forward to support such a noble cause. Is it too Utopian to be true?

What do you think is the real reason?  What would it take to catch fancy of the Social Media Generation?

PS: Really bad of the film maker Tom Shadyac and co for not doing anything for Dr Patch’s work

(Photo Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31383314@N03)

When you are at this preferred place doing what you like doing you are at your natural optimum best. For some strange reason I’ve always felt that I could brainstorm better/longer if I am at a different/unusual place. Not surprisingly it has turned out to be the case indeed. From reading a business book to ideation on a business idea Cafes and open spaces(esp Parks) seem to work very well for me. I’ve spent quite some time by myself sitting in a cafe sipping cappuccino  reading a book or scribbling ideas with a pencil at a park.

Another place where lot of interesting big/small ideas pop in my head is while having bath. It’s been quite a few times now when I have gone to shower with a thought seed and have come out with a cool idea ready to be detailed and execute. Obvious as it sounds, most of us need an optimum environment to be at our productive best but despite it being so obvious we tend to not take it seriously. I for one don’t go to a cafe everyday/every other day.

Maybe we all should try to identify such zones and try to visit them more often. What do you think?

1. Updated List of All TED Talks (Spread Sheet)
2. How To Be Alone (Awesome Video)
3. The first thing you do when you sit down at the computer  (Seth’s Blog)
4. The Joy of Books (Video)

1. Mark Suster on should startups focus on profitability or not
2. Joel Spolksy’s Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry’s vs. Amazon
3. Jason Zimba on understanding exponential growth
4. Jason Freedman on Obliterating Startup Depression (H/T @dipankarsarkar)
5. via TheGuardian UK Humans have the need to read

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16290949

The story behind it: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-19/twitter-wins-300-million-alwaleed-investment-amid-site-revamp.html

COD or Cash on Delivery as we now know it wasn’t no where near its popularity today a few years back. Today quite a few people (who call us at dialabook and otherwise) know and talk about Cash upon Delivery as a concept (books milne ke baad paise de sakte hain?) if not the exact term. COD as we know has taken the entire e-commerce Industry(if we can call it) by a storm.

To give you some perspective, about 2 years back when we(@dialabook) started collecting payment for books on delivery, we had no idea about this term and no notable e-commerce site had this option. Fast forward it to today and almost all e-commerce sites(and a few others like the one below) accept(or rather promote) COD to lure more customers.

While COD as a concept has been there for ages under the name VPP (Value Payable Post) by India Post. Here’s how their website defines VPP

The value payable system is designed to meet the requirements of persons who wish to pay for articles sent to them at the time of receipt of the articles or of the bills or railway receipts relating to them, and also to meet the requirements of traders and others who wish to recover, through the agency of the Post Office the value of article supplied by them.

Govt VPP however seems to have an upper limit of Rs 5000/-, which means you can’t send goods worth more than 5k through them.

Not just VPP, some courier companies in India have been supporting COD since March 2009 at least. Though some  startups like @dialabook might have been offering COD locally before, the big shift happened in April 2010 when country’s leading e-commerce player Flipkart introduced COD in April 2010 with a cash limit of Rs 2500/-, followed eight months later by Infibeam (FYI: Indiaplaza announced COD on 25th March 2010, a few days ahead of Flipkart ). It is also worth noting that some services like travelguru.com were offering COD option at least 2 years before e-commerce companies started adopting it. Seeing its success elsewhere, online travel portals yatra and Ezeego1 also launched COD in year 2011

As it turns out India isn’t the only breeding ground for COD. China,Russia etc have been a witness to the popularity of COD for long.

Going by the stats in India, as much as 60% customers of top 5 e-commerce sites in India use the option of paying by cash on delivery (COD) and many of these sites have credited COD  for fueling their rapid growth. While COD for obvious reasons makes a lot of sense for Indian customers and definitely opens a new market (students etc) to e-commerce it isn’t exactly what the doc prescribed or should prescribe. Here are some of the things wrong with COD

1. Cost: Nearly all courier companies charge extra for collecting cash. This cost is divided in two parts
   Fixed Cost: Rs 20-150/- ;  Variable Cost: 1-3% of the COD Amount. (This is mostly for high price items like mobile phones, laptops etc). If the item is priced low then the COD charges at times exceed one’s margin in the product and if the item is priced very high then the % COD charge turns out to be in hundreds or even thousands
2. Delay in payment: Unlike credit card transactions, COD payment generally takes 1-2 weeks or more to be transferred to your account. This bites your cash flow especially as the COD amounts start becoming huge.
3. Delay in deliveries: On an average COD deliveries are delayed by 12-36 hours when compared to normal deliveries. The reasons for the same are mostly non-availability of customer or cash and many a times both. Here unlike regular deliveries the parcel can’t be dropped to a neighbors place
4. Higher Returns/Cancellations: Since the customer hasn’t paid in advance, they can always cancel/refuse to take the delivery and sight reasons like I found this phone cheaper locally and have bought it from there or I have changed my mind, will buy a new laptop later
5. Overheads: Collecting the cash, collating the receipts and maintaining records et all is a nightmare

With increasingly every online business offering it despite its disadvantages(to retailers) the situation might just go out of hand and turn into a death spiral (at least for some non/less funded businesses that rely heavily on their internal cash flows). Small startups are the ones that should be really concerned about these issues instead of blindly aping others and starting COD.

With time as the e-commerce market in India matures, there *might* be more trust in established mechanisms of swiping cards for paying and some people will get over the liking for COD and prefer pre-payments. But, given the case in China, Russia etc it looks like unless the e-commerce majors deliberately start demoting COD and promoting other payment options we just might replicate what’s happening elsewhere i.e 60-85% people using e-commerce sites paying by COD.

Some ways around COD

1. Multiple Payment Options (at least 5-6)
2. Pre-payment methods (like wallets, cards)
3. Mobile banking and SMS payments
4. Card on Delivery
5. Giving incentives to users for choosing online payment against COD
6. Alternative payment methods such as paypal etc

While COD is a good option to have in some cases its double edged sword which should be used with a lot of caution and foresight. What do you think?

Sometimes while taking care of Dial-a-Book operations I find myself in a situation where I have to deliver an order (because of urgency of the situation and unavailability of other designated resources). Last such case happened 4-5 days back when a student ordered a book in afternoon on a condition that it should be delivered the same day as he had an exam next day afternoon, Fair enough. There was however a little problem in this, we didn’t have the concerned book in stock and it had to be procured locally. After a few hours and towards the end of our office hours when we managed to procure the book, we had no one left in the office to deliver it. Now came the last resort, for me to deliver them personally, when I told this at home that I’ll be at home late as I had to deliver a book, pat came a reply, “You can get it delivered tomorrow by your delivery team”. While in normal course of action that’d have been except in this case it was urgent as the customer had an exam due next day and thus wanted the book the same day.

The reason why I shared the above mentioned case was because I felt I could take care of this case because I could relate to the customer and their problem ( a student needing a book desperately for an exam scheduled next day) . Empathy with the customer had the power to drive me to go out of the way and make sure that the book is delivered the same day.

Isn’t this how this generally works?

If everybody from product designers to the customer service executives could empathize with their customers they would be in a position to offer much better solutions to their problems.  On the contrary if the person in question can’t feel the pain of the customer they might not be able to offer exemplary customer experience.

What do you think?

One of the things that struck a chord with me was this thing called ‘The Myth of Perseverance’, which essentially means falling into the trap of believing that the hardwork one is doing for their startup will eventually pay off and result in success. A typical example of this could be a team of engineers & designers working a web product, adding features and making changes regularly and thinking that they are creating value and after a period of time their product will become popular/profitable and their efforts will reap good returns.

This phenomenon is quite commonplace at the individual level as well. There are plenty people who continue to slog in the jobs routinely spending hours at stretch and hoping their designation/pay etc will improve just because they are putting in a lot of hard work.

While there is nothing wrong with doing hard work in startups or jobs it also has its fallout. The biggest fallout  here is focusing too much on the hard work in hope that it will somehow work out and in doing this they delay/don’t realize if things aren’t working out the way they were supposed to and thus preventing them from making any effort in this direction. This gets particularly tricky when the business/product seems to be running but not running well enough, this illusion of progress can be really dangerous

‘

In short, be it a job or a startup it doesn’t have to necessarily take years of hard work  for finding the stairway to success.

This myth is applicable to anything from Business to Relationships. When things don’t seem to work even after doing everything you can think of, maybe its time to ‘Pivot‘