Snapdeal's app-only Shopo launches website, mobile site

Snapdeal-owned Shopo,  a zero commission marketplace that was earlier app-only, on Wednesday announced the launch of its website and mobile site. It also announced its integration with another Snapdeal company Freecharge for an ESCROW account. The announcements were made by the company to mark its successful completion of one year of operations.  

Giving reasons for this move, Sandeep Komaravelly, Senior Vice President, Shopo said, "When we started out, we thought that app is the easiest way to list a product for a seller, because you can click a photograph and upload the product. That is why, initially, we focused mainly on the app. Now that we have been able to get 5 million products from sellers, we decided to move to website and m-site, as a lot of buyers wanted to explore and use these channels as well. Some people prefer one channel over the other and we didn't want to lose out on those customers."

The company has also announced its integration with digital wallet company Freecharge, acquired by Snapdeal in April last year. The integration would offer escrow protection to buyers and sellers transacting on Shopo, which means after the payment for a product, the buyers' money will be held in an escrow account and would be released to the seller only upon confirmation of delivery of the product.

Initially an online marketplace for handicraft products, Shopo went through a makeover after its acquisition by e-commerce giant Snapdeal in 2013 and was re-launched as an app-only marketplace in July last year. The company claims to have already added over 200,000 buyers on its platform and plans to scale it up to 1 million by the end of this financial year. The marketplace has over 5 million product listings on its platform.

"When you look at overlap of sellers on Shopo and Snapdeal, it is less than 1 per cent. That is great, because most of these sellers mostly don't exist on other platforms and that's why we are sure that we will be able to grow to 1 million by the end of next year," Komaravelly told Business Today.

The company, however, is still working on monetising its platform as it charges no commission to sellers and plans to bring out tools for advertisements by the end of this quarter.

Shopo targets SMBs and allows them to set up an online shop in its space free of charge to sell their products. The sellers and buyers can also interact with each other and bargain the price. To make buying and selling easier, it has also added several other features like shop discovery, interest selection for users and  updates from social networking sites to build greater engagement on feed.