Pivots its Technology Product Development division into a Revenue Center
iPay announces it association with an Indonesian Telecom Company to provide them with technological support. As per the agreement, iPay will assist them with full stake of technology starting from its intellectual property and patented technology comprising Retailer operating Android Customized Kiosk, Technology that gets integrated with Sellers and Retailers, CRM solution developed in house, Ticketing System and Communication system for customers.
iPay is India’s foremost company focused to create assisted Ecommerce through its network of neighborhood retailers using technology.
The Indonesian Telecom company zeroed in on iPay in view of its Superior Technology created from the grass roots level that enables even a semi-literate and illiterate retailers to use the platform and benefit from it. They believe that the challenge lies in creating technology for first time users. During their India visit, the company personnel were therefore quite surprised to see retailers operating with such ease. In fact,IPay prides itself on the fact that a 55 year old semi-literate woman retailer does business worth Rs.8, 000 per day through its model.
Krishna Lakamsani, founder & CEO, iPay commented, “This association helps us expand into other countries without losing focus of our expansion plans in India. We intend to empower the common people around the world toindulge in e-commerce through neighborhood e-tailers. That will help us to see what kind of products are sold and customer preferences across emerging countries. Furthermore, Indonesia is very similar to India culturally and in terms of retail. The products being sold on our platform in India and demand for products are similar to each other in both the countries. In view of this, it seems like the right time for Indonesia to venture into this business model.â€
With this association, iPay intends to create the largest Neighborhood E-tailer network without owning any shop and inventory. It believes that this Assisted e-commerce model is not only required in Indiabut in every countrywith small retailers.
Apart from this, expanding to other countries and starting operations from scratch would have been time consuming process, along with requiring a lot of capital investment. Therefore, iPay has made the expansion process in a foreign land become faster and easier with retailer assisted e-tailing through its platform. It will also help the company gather a lot of data from grass root levels to predict what customers needs.
iPay has spent 80% of its bootstrapped money in developing cutting edge technology for retailers; hence it was a wise idea to monetize it to make the company self-sustainable. Till date, its Technology product Development division was its Cost Center, in terms of Building IP. However after this association, thedivisionhas become a Revenue center as well.
iPay plans to partner and proliferate in three more countries viz. South Africa, Vietnam and Bangladesh. These expansions will help its technology division to become more profitable while the operations team focuses on expansion in India.
About iPay
iPay was incepted in the year 2013 triggered by the idea of creating an assisted market place. Headquartered in Hyderabad, it offers an e-inventory, by the name ‘Business in box’ uploaded in a tablet that connects the consumers to e-sellers through local retailers. It is assisted ecommerce market place that taps consumers who are unaware of e-retail and its usage, to purchase online by paying offline.
Why iPay
It intends to go beyond the tiny 2% of online shoppers in India who are on the internet and make e-commerce accessible by taking it to the remotest locations and traditional offline shoppers. The platform banks upon the relationship and trust that the consumers share with their local neighborhood grocery stores to penetrate through a segment of consumers that has never been online before.
How it works
iPay with its expertise has simplified the process of bringing offline buyers, local retailers and sellers to a single integrated platform. The local retailers serve as the cash point for iPay. Customers can browse through the products on the tablet and select those they would like to purchase. As Retailer may not know or uneducated if there are any queries for customer The retailer then simply needs to enter the customer’s phone number into the tablet to receive a call from the iPay call center within 3 seconds. Then call center well trained executive will required information regarding the product which customer is looking to purchase Post finalizing the products details, iPay confirms the booking and accordingly the customer pays cash and takes receipt from the retailer. iPay connects the seller and retailer for the shipment which is then transported directly to the customer or the retailer.
Multiple Benefits
Apart from focusing on the customers,iPayalso enables the sellers to broaden their reach earlier limited to 25 million people shopping online. It also helps them expand their network and ship with confidence as the deal is pre-paid. Besides this, the local retailers can sell many more products and services and earn more by just being the facilitator to end consumer without the pre-requisites of space and pocket burning investments. It also offers shipping and warehouse services to the sellers at minimal charges.
The Way Ahead
With a team of 120 people, iPay plans to expand to four states from presently operating two states and exceed its count of 25,000 retailers to generate Rs 1200 Crores as GTV(Gross Transaction Value). It aims to take the first mover advantage of selling E-commerce to bottom of the pyramid customers with the steadfast commitment to excel in its path-breaking endeavor.
Through iPay Platform at present Local Kirana/Grocery stores are selling Items which they have never sold before such as Iron boxes, Washing Machines , wet Grinders, Water Purifiers, Mobile phone , Personal care and Electronic . iPay Is already servers 2.8 million customers across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana with its retail network of 3700+ retailers .At present iPay acquires a new customer every 5 seconds on the clock some where in AP and Telanaga. Every 1 seocnds 5 customers walk into 3900+ iPay stores and every 1.93 seconds one sale happens on platform
Last Month iPay closed 10 Million GTV run rate / aim to double its GMV by next 120 days.
