Flipkart is bridging the gap between e-commerce and commerce, one step at a time

Within a week of announcing the launch of ‘Flipkart One Stop’ for sellers, the company has now moved to please the customers with the launch of ‘Ping’, a ‘social shopping’ experience on the Flipkart app. Using Ping, Flipkart users will get to chat with friends while shopping, and share experience using text, photos, and emoticons in real time.

Interestingly, the company’s CTO and Head of Engineering, Peeyush Ranjan, had recently stated in an interview with YourStory that the future of e-commerce is close to commerce in real life which involves instances like taking suggestions from friends and family, comparing and other situations.

What is Flipkart Ping?

According to Punit Soni, Flipkart’s Chief Product Officer, shopping is a social activity involving friends and family whereas online shopping, on the other hand, has largely remained a solo experience. Flipkart’s in-house research revealed that the inability to shop collaboratively is the number one barrier for online shoppers these days. To bridge this gap, ‘Ping’ will allow users to talk to each other real time in order to make decisions and decide on what to buy.

Ping in its beta stage of development and will be available to customers through an invite only model in the first phase.

Technology and features of Flipkart Ping are:

1. It employs highly advanced architecture to ensure that dynamic traffic surges are handled well.
2. It has been optimized for efficient results even on slow 2G networks.
3. It will also support Android wearables where user can read and reply to messages from their Android watches.

F1-Stop for sellers

With the aim to create the ultimate ecosystem for sellers, Flipkart launched Flipkart One Stop to enable sellers by equipping them with necessary information and procedures to kick start and grow their business online.

Seller-Panel management happens to be the key for the success of online sellers. A lot of on-boarded sellers request for guidance on growth strategies for online selling.

According to Flipkart, close to 70% of sellers struggle to get their business registered and up and running online. With F1-Stop offering services ranging across registration, training, cataloguing, packaging to financial assistances, sellers can pick and choose as per their requirements. Currently, available for sellers in 10 key cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Surat, and Jaipur etc, this initiative will be extended to top 20 cities by end of this year.

Flipkart has tied up with full service agencies like Sellerworx, 99yrs.com, BluBox, Chikiweb, Browntape, and others to help SMEs, wholesales, manufacturers and retailers from across the nation start their online journey. Currently, the company has tied up with about five-10 agencies and plans to get 50-60 agencies by the end of this year.

With its recent round of funding, Flipkart is valued at almost $15 billion, close to the valuation of Indian Oil Corporation. The e-commerce giant has raised over $3.5 billion and on-boarded some high profile talent from Silicon Valley. Simultaneously, some of its key people, including the CTO Amod Malviya, VP Products Saran Chatterjee, and engineering head Sameer Nigam have left in the last few months.