Prior to 2019, Akanksha Agrawal, a homemaker from Raipur, Chhattisgarh had no profits of her personal and lacked the finances to start a enterprise. But when she heard approximately GlowRoad, a Bengaluru-primarily based social commerce platform that permits resellers to earn with out investing any seed money, she decided to provide it a try.
After developing a profile at the platform (the agency has a website and a mobile app), she started out reselling women’s garb throughout her social circles on WhatsApp and Facebook. With a commission of INR two hundred-three hundred per sale, she earns extra than INR 50K a month and calls herself a micro-entrepreneur.
The rise of social trade in India has similarly empowered many humans, but women like Agrawal, with a huge social following, have benefited the most. The motive lies within the business version itself. As the name suggests, social trade is all about promoting directly to consumers on social structures like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and greater. And the bigger a reseller’s (aka influencer, in social commerce parlance) social circles on these platforms, the greater the income opportunity.
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As India is home to 776 Mn lively social media customers and counting, the range of resellers has grown exponentially inside the beyond few years. Realising a way to monetise one’s social influence, hundreds of thousands have collaborated with social commerce structures like GlowRoad and its same-city competitor Meesho, Mumbai-primarily based Shop101 and Jaipur-primarily based Cartlay to generate additional earning as resellers.
Interestingly, more than seventy five% of resellers in the segment are girls, typically homemakers or self-hired, who need to acquire monetary independence through running from the consolation in their homes.
The GlowRoad Way Of Collaborative Growth
Set up in 2017 through a collection of five — Sonal Verma, Kunal Sinha, Nitesh Pant, Shekhar Sahu and Nilesh Padariya — GlowRoad these days has more than 2 Mn resellers catering to 50 Mn customers across the u . S ..
This platform and its ilk have grown quite popular now not most effective due to the fact they help people enter the ecommerce atmosphere for substantial income but also lets in brands to promote their merchandise pan-India without worrying about consumer acquisition, virtual transactions or logistics control.
The whole system is designed to attach 3 segments — the dealers, the resellers and the shoppers — in a continuing fashion via GlowRoad’s flagship technology. The organization onboards small businesses and manufacturers who generally promote their merchandise offline. Upon registration, sellers can show product pix and their prices at the platform, while the social trade corporation adds a small markup to the original charge. The vendor’s listings are on hand to the resellers.
To facilitate sellers similarly, the business enterprise has evolved an clean-to-combine API that lets in apps with high footfall or D2C manufacturers to installation digital shopfronts on their respective systems.
Onboarding the resellers is executed in a similar manner. These are individuals with massive social media followings, although the business enterprise has no longer mandated any particular limit (minimum/maximum fans). After registration, they could explore the products on provide and add them to a virtual shopfront supplied via GlowRoad.
A reseller determines the product charge over and above the asking rate of the unique vendor submit which a custom URL for each product is generated for sharing on social media to begin promoting. For example, if a dealer lists the price of a T-shirt as INR 1500, and the reseller sells it for INR 1700, he/she will be able to make INR two hundred in fee.
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Next comes the ‘buying’ element, again stored pretty simple for clients’ gain. When a buyer clicks on a link at the social platform (Facebook or WhatsApp in this example), they're redirected to the reseller shopfront and spot the reseller’s fee tag. GlowRoad offers all foremost charge options, along with UPI, credit and debit cards, internet banking and e-wallets, besides deferred charge options together with cash on transport (COD), BNPL and EMI.
Once an order is confirmed, GlowRoad handles the logistics through its tie-u.S.With diverse 1/3-birthday party logistics (3PL) corporations like Shadowfax, Ecom Express and Xpressbees. The enterprise has a transport attain of 26,000 pin codes thru its shipping companions, and customers are saved updated on cargo and order popularity. Both dealers and resellers get their payments after shipping.
As resellers now not stay within the loop post-buy, it lets in them to cognizance on scaling up their commercial enterprise and growing order volumes. Many of them push sales via live video trade, attractive content material and attractive discounts to hold dependable clients.
GlowRoad claims that its strong reseller community sees repeat business that interprets into higher believe and growing earnings.
Why Tier 2, Tier three Locations Play A Key Role
Social trade has largely flourished beyond the metros for a vital cause — the agree with thing. The high-quality-conscious and price-conscious customers from India constantly preferred to shop in-store, but the patron mind-set changed extensively within the wake of Covid-19.
Around 72% of Indians are still hesitant to go to bodily stores as according to the Wunderman Thompson Commerce’s Future Shopper Report 2021, and plenty of offline shoppers have opted for the web mode for the sake of safety and comfort. Given this scenario, social commerce is the following great thing to manifest as non-metro shoppers depend closely on peer validation earlier than making a purchase.
A small phase is likewise buying on-line as mounted manufacturers have fewer stores in Tier 2 and Tier three locations. But even they require similar validation earlier than putting in their cash.
Social commerce has bridged this agree with gap as resellers do commercial enterprise within their social circles and hold have an effect on over maximum purchasers. This means after they advocate merchandise, humans are more likely to make a purchase. GlowRoad blessings from this agree with-pushed reputation as 84% of its clients are based totally in Tier 2 cities and past, says the agency.
“When it involves Tier 2 cities or places beyond that, the selling approach must be very different. In reality, we've linked end-clients with resellers whom they already recognize, and it builds agree with in social commerce. Additionally, maximum of our dealers are small enterprise proprietors, and their charges are quite low-cost. That is any other enchantment for customers to move for it with self assurance,” stated Sahu.
Nurturing The Reseller Economy
India’s burgeoning reseller network is propelling the increase of social commerce. Its market size became worth $2 Bn in 2020 and is predicted to reach $70 Bn with the aid of 2030, growing at a CAGR of forty two.6%, a document by way of Bain & Company says.
But unlike main markets like China and the USA, the united states of america’s reseller surroundings continues to be in an early boom level and faces many demanding situations whilst captivating a rate-conscious target market or constructing a devoted customer base. For first-time resellers or those with very little know-how of advertising and income, these problems loom large as they will get too aggressive at the same time as promoting and scare the chance away or give in to clients’ needs all too without difficulty and lose out on their commissions.
GlowRoad is trying to clear up this hassle via numerous tutorials on reselling quality practices, published on its platform. It also provides quick videos of resellers sharing their reviews to show their buyers into dependable clients. In addition, the group enables resellers zero in on nice-selling products in tune with their social media recognition. For instance, someone who makes motion pictures on make-up pointers will advantage extra via selling cosmetics.
Today, the APAC and North American nations with big purchaser bases are tapping into reseller energy to pressure social commerce. One of the most famend names on this space is Shanghai-primarily based Pinduoduo that has added numerous attractive solutions like organization buying, stay trade and gamification elements to its platform. The Indian environment is also adopting new and revolutionary purchasing modules for better engagement with new-age clients who need the first-class of each worlds — the benefit of online buying and the personalised revel in of physical retail.
With GlowRoad and its ilk building a trust-based social promoting version to cater to a growing market — the percentage of social commerce in typical ecommerce is predicted to upward thrust from 1-2% to 4-five% of an envisioned $140 Bn by 2025 — India seems to be heading within the right course.