What Indian Internet Businesses Need: Article in CIO featuring Ritesh Raj Gupta

It is estimated that around 3.74 lakh tickets are booked on IRCTC in a day. Despite the reported sluggishness of the site, it is the best possible proof of the Internet’s growing popularity and dependence in India.  

India has around 150 million Internet users, and that’s just at a mere 12 percent penetration rate. Despite that, it is the third-largest Internet population in the world, behind China and the U.S. New online retailers are mushrooming virtually every month, and growth in Internet usage is mainly driven by mobile, social, and tablet usage.

Till now, Internet in India was just a numbers game. But that’s about to change.

E-commerce giants around the country are struggling to please an uber-demanding and price-sensitive market, while keeping a competitive edge. The general lack of infrastructure pertaining to logistics, distribution, and highly available and cost-effective bandwidth in India is soon set to make the business model unsustainable.

In the current ecosystem, businesses report high costs of logistics and servicing clients. Inadequate systems for online payment and transaction further hinder the experience for users. And finally, cheap and easy access to Internet is still a distant dream.

CIOs in the industry are increasingly turning to BI, analytics, and mobility solutions to identify the gaps in customer experience, and turning to IT to fill those gaps. But, in this game, the government of India is a very crucial player. And, as is evident from the growing numbers of IRCTC, it will alsagazineo be the biggest gainer.

The CIO magazine spoke to the CIOs of some of India’s leading e-commerce companies regarding what India’s Internet businesses need, and this is what they said:

Ritesh Raj Gupta, Vice President, AaramShop

“Internet-driven business is an opportunity that needs to be tapped into by every physical business. Internet has to be one of the key channels in a multi-channel strategy. For us at AaramShop, therefore, grocery retailing on the Internet is not the preserve of a few, but the opportunity which has to be made available to millions of retailers across the country and their consumers.”

Ranjit Satyanath, Customer Care Associate and Sr. General Manager, Solutions and Technology, Shoppers Stop

“Currently, people buy things online for convenience and discounts. While the former benefit should continue into the future, online players won’t be able sustain giving discounts for very long. They are now trying to differentiate themselves on assortment, user-experience and quality of service.

The challenge facing the industry today is the general lack of infrastructure in the country with respect to distribution and logistics. Add to that the Quixotic tax regime we have inIndia. Online retailers are also finding it tough to attract and retain talent because in our country, startups are generally perceived as risky career options and not without good reason—this is often reflected in the user-experience on Indian sites. I also think that Indian online retailers give more importance to features than to design and user-experience.”

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Network to net work : Can Social Media be used for recruitment

Many companies are using social media sites as a channel for recruitments. Unnati Narang from Times of India talks to Ritesh Raj Gupta and tells you how you can make the most of it.

Social media is the new age order. Gone are the days of looking through telephone directories to find people. No longer is mankind dependent on pen and paper, or brick and mortar. With almost everything in the world going online, from high-tech products to groceries, so has the search for jobs. The latest in the list of social media applications is job hunting. It offers immense networking opportunities, allowing one to be in touch with prospective employers at the click of a mouse.

With plenty of content flowing on these websites every single minute, what are some of the opportunities and impediments associated with it? Can a virtual medium ever lead to a perfect employer-employee match? "Social media essentially is a platform for individuals to create their own network of people whom they know, like their family, friends and peers and people whom they don't know but share some common interest or passion with. All this exposes one to more and more information, support updates and even job leads. Social media can definitely be used to get a job but getting the right job is essentially dependent on your own network," says Ritesh Raj Gupta, Vice President – Technology, AaramShop. So while it does increase your options and updates you about the opportunities out there, social media in itself is not enough to strike the right match. The right approach can make all the difference.

"Job seekers should first identify the right companies where they can best leverage their professional talent and which are in line with the job seeker's career aspirations. Job seekers should do some research on the social media presence of those companies, connect with the employees of those organisations and familiarise themselves with their social profiles. The profile of a job seeker should clearly communicate the individual's personal competencies, interests and professional learning. Job seekers should keep their status updated and stay actively connected with their network. While using social media as a job search tool, job seekers should refrain from participating in controversial discussions," says Garg. Discussing other preconditions and impediments, Ramanath Gurjala, Vice-President, HR, Lapp India Pvt Ltd quips, "Social media can be used as a valuable tool if the candidate has the opportunity or is able to connect to the right person. It is important for the candidate to differentiate himself in the marketplace and establish his online presence in a definitive way. In other words, he/ she needs to establish an online brand presence to facilitate an organised search. Social media also faces certain drawbacks. The fact that a candidate is up for grabs can expose himself in the current company he or she is working for. A candidate's online presence can unfortunately be tracked. Sometimes the candidate's opinions may reflect poorly on the company." Ritesh Raj Gupta lists some of the do's and don'ts of social media:

Do's

- Have a decent and consistent online presence

- Have a large and relevant network

- Make a list of few companies you are interested in and follow them on social networks

- Gather more information on the developments in these companies

- Be searchable on search engines

- Add genuine references, credentials and awards to your profile

- Create and upload a video resume highlighting your achievements

Don'ts

- Never contradict your profile on different networks

- Never fake your profile or references

- Try and be friends with everyone in the companies you wish to join unless you genuinely know them

- Be careful of what you say on social media

This article originally appeared in Times of India

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State of Online Grocery Shopping Report: India

Here is a comprehensive view on the Indian consumers’ behavior and brand preferences when it comes to online grocery buying. In the SOGS Report: India, findings have been presented in terms of four broad parameters:

1. Who is buying groceries online? – SOGS report dives into demographic details of the shoppers, like gender & age.

2. Where are the buyers coming from? (With the current report restricted to the National Capital Region)

3. When they are shoppers buying the groceries?

4. What categories and brands are they buying? – Comprehensively explores categories and sub-categories and the top selling brands within them.

You can download the SOGS report from here.

Changing the way India shops for it's daily groceries! The AaramShop way!

The phrase ´The World is getting Online" has been given another dimension in India where you see you nearby ´Kirana Store´(Mom & Pop Stores) online and ready to take your orders through your facebook account and set to deliver at your preferred time to your doorstep at no extra cost. This has been made possible through ´Aaramshop.com´,(Hindi for Comfort + Shop) a website that is more of a hybrid retail platform that gives you choice of thousands of products and brands to choose from for your grocery.

The Online shopping has increased significantly over the last few years in India and is fast catching the trend. The consumers that AaramShop plans to address is 25 to 45 years of age, urban, females and males, professionals or well qualified "home maker by choice", technology friendly, habitual users of computer and other connected devices and is definitely on Facebook along with her peer network. This consumer can log on the platform using their facebook accounts and then shop for the products they want to buy, they can then choose their nearby Kirana Store (Mom & Pop Stores) from our listed stores along with the preferred time of the delivery. This ´Kiranawala´ (Mom & Pop Stores)would be informed about the order and it would be delivered to the doorstep at the time mentioned with the payment of cash only on delivery with no cost escalations.

AaramShop is a web-store to your door solution for all branded groceries products. In this way the consumer would be much more informed about various other brands that are available for the same product and also their pricing. AaramShop has been build keeping in mind consumers trust on their social networks and the brand recommendations that the networks make, thus helping is arriving at a better choice. Also since it can be done while you spend your time on facebook chatting with your friends it becomes an extremely easy and convenient way to shop for your groceries."

Next on the agenda is mobile based applications along with a lot of other web based applications like brand specific widegets and analytics.

Check out this site, www.aaramshop.com for more information