Interviews

We Will Never Compete With Our Brand Partners: Snapdeal

Snapdeal
Tony Navin
VP – Business Development, Snapdeal
Snapdeal.com, one of the home grown largest online marketplace, has been investing in scaling up its overall logistics and delivery capabilities to expand its reach into smaller cities. In an interaction with Channeltimes, Tony Navin, VP – Business Development, Snapdeal, shared the expansion plans.

CT: What kind of pull Snapdeal has created for Oplus brand in India, since you are the only exclusive online portal for its tablets and now for smartphones?

Navin: With Oplus we have created buzz around this Taiwanese brand, which has currently one model in tablet and in smartphones category, we have been doing end to end sales and marketing support on our website as well on social media. Today, Oplus tablets are among the top four popular tablet on our website, we have close to 600 models of tablets ranging Apple, Samsung, Micromax, etc. But in a short span of time, we have created a good pull for the brand. We are doing tactical marketing for its brands to push its products and build brand visibility. We have other brands like Karbonn, Xolo, Micromax as online partner.

CT: It has been observed that online customers are unhappy with online after sales support and service, how Snapdeal ensures customers satisfaction?

Navin: The online marketplace is no longer an alien sales platform for any of the brand, there are brands, for whom online contributes 20 percent to their revenues. However, the online is still at nascent stage in India. Today we work with authorized offline sellers, and there is no difference in getting service support from both online and offline way of buying products. As we are a marketplace, and are very transparent for warranty and service support to our customers.

CT: Do you have any plans to launch your own brand of tablets and smartphones, the way Flipkart has launched?

Navin: We will never compete with our brand partners, that is not the idea, on one hand you are partnering exclusively with one brand and at the same you are promoting your own brand. We will never launch our own brand in any of the product category and cannibalize other brand.

CT: Government has been giving a lot of thrust in pushing e-commerce sector, which are the areas will be investing on?

Navin: We will be investing on expanding our present reach into tier IV towns and districts. We will be strengthening our third party logistics delivery in both region and nationally. Today, 60 percent of our share of order are coming from tier II and III cities. The third area is Technology, we will ensure that our site don’t crash due to heavy online traffic.

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