E-commerce has gain an immense boom since its inception. Today. All the rising entrepreneurs and solopreneurs are depending on e-commerce to monetize their business ideas and lend their dreams to the top-level business games. Some of the platforms are actually transforming dreams into reality. Bikayi is one of them and doing it flawlessly since 2019.
Bikayi enables SMBs to scale up on digital platforms thereby enabling them to reach out to a wider audience base. The platform provides businesses with a digital storefront, professional features, and tools to help them grow. Some of the features include a Dedicated Business Coach, Catalogue Listing, Shipping Facility, Payments, and also Insights on Customer Behaviour to manage their e-commerce stores through a single platform.
Our ELE Times Correspondent Sheeba Chauhan took this wonderful opportunity to talk with Ashutosh Singla, Co-founder & CTO, Bikayi and this conversation is insightful and worth reading not just for entrepreneurs but every budding mind.
Excerpt:
ELE Times: How social e-commerce technology is creating solopreneurs, helping them monetize passion and being on the top of their game?
Ashutosh Singla, Co-founder & CTO, Bikayi: In the post-covid era, we have seen how digitization of every process has been expedited. Social-ecommerce is no exception. The emerging class of solopreneurs has been successfully taking advantage of social e-commerce technology. SMBs are discovering ways to professionally handle their businesses. With gaining increasing access to a lot of marketing tools they are able to sell beyond their closed network of family and friends.
ELE Times: How Bikayi is helping next-gen entrepreneur’s scale up their family business through its technology? Please include few recent example to enlighten our audience.
Ashutosh Singla, Co-founder & CTO, Bikayi: The next generation taking charge of their family businesses is born into technology and is in favour of digitization of business. These emerging young entrepreneurs understands that running an e commerce business is not easy. Bikayi provides a complete set of features including payment, delivery integration, marketing services which helps them to launch as well as scale their businesses ahead. For example, many SMBs in electronics category have been able to do more than Rs.1 crore of sales on Bikayi’s platform in the festive season. This is over and above their OTC sales.
ELE Times: Why VCs are betting their chips on startups that are creating solopreneurs? How solopreneurs are different from entrepreneurs?
Ashutosh Singla, Co-founder & CTO, Bikayi: A few years ago the market or the ecosystem was not friendly for soloprenuers. Various challenges and difficulties persisted in going online or even getting a payment gateway registered. Online as a distribution channel didn’t exist for SMBs couple of years ago. The scenario now has changed completely. The entire ecosystem today whether it is financial products or delivery companies has become more open to small businesses. Also, SMBs have access to smart phones and internet connectivity.
ELE Times: What are the major trends that are seen on your platform from SMB? It is evident that major SMBs are from tier 2 cities or in the age group of 20-30, do you find any relevant reason for the same?
Ashutosh Singla, Co-founder & CTO, BikayiPost the second wave of Covid, with the economy steadily recovering, we see a rapid growth in our merchant base, majority belonging to tier 2-3 cities and a lot of traction is contributed from tier 1 cities. The reason for the same can be attributed to the fact that the consumer base in tier 2 is still very connected to the local shops and a majority of people are doing business. In comparison, metro cities house a significant number of service class population.
ELE Times: Fintech is growing at an unstoppable pace. Do you think it can help e-commerce platforms in future for smooth transaction while shopping online?
Ashutosh Singla, Co-founder & CTO, BikayiTwo major factors contribute to the purchasing decisions of the Indian consumer today – trust with online payments and price sensitivity. The same hold true with merchants as well. Merchants today are looking for a trustworthy platform that can help them reach their product offerings to last mile consumer. With multiple fintech players enabling options like BNPL, easy EMI schemes, Cashback schemes, easy UPI payments, the development in technology are helping business to provide more incentives for customers to purchase goods.
ELE Times: Bikayi has shown immense growth in the last two years. Would you like to enlighten our viewers with the marketing and strategies used by Bikayi to grow faster and stronger?
Ashutosh Singla, Co-founder & CTO, Bikayi It has been our constant endeavour to provide the best solutions for our merchants to bridge the gap between them and their consumers. For us at Bikayi, we follow the same diligence as is followed by the merchants on our platform – listening to the customers and customer obsession has been our key strength. This has helped Bikayi in helping merchants to scale their Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) on an average by 40% in the past month of the festive season.
Contributing Author:
Sheeba Chauhan |Sub-Editor | ELE Times
