E – Commerce

Website analysis of

Efforts by:

Deepali Pandit

Shivam Kharwal

BFT - V

Abstract

In this study, I present a theoretical model, which grows together the elements of shopping

online with the increased internet usage and main emphasis was laid on limeroad.com.

The data have been gathered from various sources mainly from the company’s official

website and a qualitative analysis has been carried out.

The core category of the model is “Love. Create. Share. Shop”. The analysis and the

model answer the question of principles and practices should be considered in to make

your e-commerce portal successful.

It is based on the philosophies that are linked to the categories: material sourcing,

Customer satisfaction, Revenue model, Competitors, saving resources and etc.

Executive Summary

Online shopping is the process consumers go through to purchase products or services

over the Internet.

An online shop, or virtual store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services

at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall.

Online shopping has spread into every corner of life, linking people to the culture

of capitalism in frequent and daily ways.

In general, shopping has always catered to middleclass and upper class women.

Shopping is fragmented and pyramid-shaped.

E-commerce enables consumers to save money and to choose among an increased

range of products, especially when products are not available locally or nationally.

However, due to online payment consumers take advantage of the increased choice and

cheaper prices that e-commerce can deliver.

This research is conducted to study the working of Limeroad.com which is a social E-

commerce portal. This report includes the various factors which are taken into

consideration by the consumers for purchasing through online shopping.

This research also takes into consideration the factors which forms the basis

of comparison made by the customers for online shopping vis-à-vis shopping through a

retail store. The main focus of this study revolves around women as a buyer.

About Limeroad

Limeroad is an ecommerce portal with a difference. Here, you can discover that perfect

top, share it with your Facebook friends, get a second opinion and buy it only if it gets a

nod from all your friends. Exactly the way we women prefer to shop. Founded in 2012 by

Suchi Mukherjee. . LimeRoad.com is a brand owned by A.M. Marketplaces Pvt. Ltd.

The platform hosts three unparalleled ecosystems: vendors, scrapbookers and

consumers who are reinforcing each other.

About CEO

Ms. Mukherjee was selected as one of 15 women worldwide, “Global Leaders under

40”, and showcased at the World Women's Forum in Paris in 2010 for her

contributions in scaling businesses which impact people’s lives deeply using

technology.

She was on the executive management team at Skype where her teams designed

and launched the biggest product upgrade in Skype’s history post-launch.

Ms Mukherjee built Gumtree, an eBay Inc. subsidiary, into a leader in the jobs and

consumer-to-consumer cars classifieds in the highly competitive UK market.

User Interface

The home page greets you with this tempting magazine spread you see in the screenshot.

This is the first page of the Limeroad scrapbook collections – ‘Affordable Intelligent living’.

A click on the rupee symbols displayed on the items shows the brand and price for that

item along with a link to view more details. The item pinned as ‘hot picks’ is the most

recommended one by Limeroad.

The pink icons serve to flaunt your style and share. Click the heart shaped icon to show

you love this collection. Click the book with clip icon to create your own scrapbook. Click

the people icon to share it with your Facebook friends.

You can flip through this page to see the next collection ‘Summertime Blues’ just as you

would flip through a fashion magazine. In addition, those green flaps on the edge of the

magazine allow you to shop by cities or brands or your own scrapbook. Creating a

scrapbook is easy – every item you browse through has a scrapbook icon. Just click the

icon and you have an open scrapbook beside. Drag everything you like and describe your

collection under ‘Lets Party’, ‘Work wear Wardrobe’, ‘Flirty me’, ‘Bollywood Dazzle’, etc.

You can then share this scrapbook with your Facebook friends or add it to your shopping

cart. Currently, the shopping cart option on the scrapbook isn’t enabled. But you need to

sign in with your Facebook account to be able to share. There is also a sign up form for

a new account. You need to be logged in if you plan to go shopping on this road. And if

someone buys your style, you will get LR point in your account.

Product Range

The menu bar lists categories from clothing and accessories to Bags to beauty,

home decor and fitness products. Whatever you browse through, there are many

filters to make your search easy, just as most e-Commerce portals do. Limeroad

deals with more than 350 brands and thousands of items.

Payment mode

Available modes of payment for the product while shopping are:

COD

Credit card

Debit card

Net banking

Paytm

Payumoney

Mobikwik

The Growth

They set out to build Limeroad in 2012 and have grown in strength since then. Suchi says

that the platform is seeing very encouraging numbers in terms of visual user generated

content —- 250,000+ units of unique user generated visual content per month – these

are unique looks. Some pointers:

The traffic has been up 10 times since April 2013

600+ vendors, up 10 times since April 13 (50% unique to Limeroad)

India accounts for $200billion (21%) of global manufacturing of lifestyle

5x orders since January 2014 v/s 2x marketing

Mobile a/c for 60% transactions

Limeroad strives to make the visuals best placed to transcend vernacular.

(even people not conversant in English would be conversant with the site)

Suchi says that, “We are going after the 400000 smartphones that will be around in 2016,

out of which 30-50% will belong to women.”

Revenue Model

Their supply side model – a tightly managed marketplace – makes them extremely

capital efficient. In other words, they do not commit working capital to hold / block

inventory. They make money when vendors sell i.e. a commission revenue (% of sales).

Business & monetization model

No inventory, capital light

High repeat rate business. 600% growth in last 12 month. 85% organic.

Commission income from vendors for products sold.

Reasons for Investor’s confidence

It is not very common to see a three year old Indian startup raise more than $20 million

in two big chunks. Raising capital is definitely not the end game but raising funds is

essential to grow quickly and helps in multiple ways. Reason for investor’s confidence are

given below:

Quality of the team.

Clear traction on metrics. Limeroad has the highest in-session engagement

metrics in the country, and the only company in the country with exploding

unique visual user generated content.

Clear alignment on vision- From the start our investors Matrix partners and

Lightspeed venture Partners shared our vision of creating largest shopping

platform for women in India.

Top Competitors

They compete only with themselves and with the rest of the offline lifestyle options for

users. Currently <1% lifestyle vendors are online in a market which at factory prices

accounts for 20% of global production of lifestyle.

No one has our level of nearly 2 million new looks and products; 95% of what one sees

on the platform is unique to Limeroad. It is the leaders in social mobile commerce.

Innovative Approach

They are the pioneers in visual social content used in Indian commerce. They are

transforming lives in the process. “LImeroad scrapbook” is one of the way of getting out

there, from the boundaries. Limeroad is the first portal to use the concept of scrapbook

which somewhere adds value to it. By this people can visualize well. It is well known by

their tag line which is: “Love. Create. Share. Shop”

Customer Satisfaction

The community posted nearly 20000 style statements as “scrapbooks” last month alone.

That’s a 100x growth in less than a year. They grew GMV 600% in the last 12 months,

there are passionate users who visited our app on average more than 84 times a year.

As a result 85% of their orders come from organic traffic. Great consumer brands are built

from building a tremendously passionate loyal base of customers, who love something

fundamental about the product

.

The Road ahead

Limeroad launched its Android mobile app 3 months ago, and already it accounts for

over 40% of our products sold.

Limeroad didn’t disclose the team strength but is in the process of expanding their teams

mostly across technology and sourcing. Regarding building a team, Suchi says, “People

are our most critical asset and we almost always look for people with a real spike and

with a strong can-do. Experience is secondary in a world where we are redefining the

rules every day.”

Limeroad is on a mission to build the most extensive delightful discovery platform with a

focus on South-East Asia.