Case Study: Hyperlocal Marketplace
Outcome
Sub-2-minute vendor onboarding · chat-based commerce · hours-not-days local delivery
Helping offline retailers take their business online and deliver products locally.
The Problem
- Local retail businesses have been majorly hit by online giants (Amazon, Flipkart, Bigbasket, etc.) and are losing their primary target customer — local residents within the city.
- The penetration of these platforms is low due to technical complexities and lack of a seamless experience to set up and manage these channels.
- Challenges surrounding existing online channels include lack of automated inventory management and cataloging, price matching with marketplaces, and inability to take custom orders.
Our Solution
- Replicate offline retail commerce experience for both buyers and sellers — including negotiation, try-and-buy, and customized orders.
- Chat-based commerce platform that provides incremental benefits and digitization to offline retailers while enabling a two-way communication channel between buyer and seller.
- Hyperlocal commerce to allow selling and delivering goods at a locality level — reducing delivery timelines from days to hours.
Research
We performed market research to understand the local retail landscape and how customers find relevant vendors for their requirements. We deep-dived into the problems faced by vendors and customers, then ran competitor research to identify the gaps that exist in the market.
Product Development
We created a hyperlocal delivery marketplace that connects local vendors with their customers. This platform provides a better local shopping experience and delivers convenience to both vendors and customers. Vendors can also maintain their order and earnings record within the platform and run a hassle-free account.
Personalizing the Experience
Vendors can set up an online presence and a website in under two minutes, which they can share with current and prospective customers via WhatsApp, Facebook, SMS, and other messengers. They can manage all customers in one platform and track orders and sales. We made the web app friendlier from an inventory management perspective with a global inventory and barcode scanners for quick catalog creation.
On the customer side, location access surfaces nearby store options. Customers can browse product catalogs and seamlessly place orders with their preferred vendors.
