Your neighbourhood shops that sell products ranging from groceries and electronics to fashion, flowers and stationery are changing their way of business. Already, payment systems have been digitised and you, probably, do not pay cash anymore. Soon, you might not need to visit the stores at all to shop. “In the next five years, almost everybody would have converted to certain platforms and digitised,” says Harish Rohokale, founder of Apptmart.
Apptmart is a Pune-based startup that is pushing the transition of traditional and new businesses to a digital mode by offering artificial intelligence-driven, easy-to-use e-commerce platforms. The brick-and-mortar entities can make a website and an app, and get help with social media. When it began to offer its services in 2019, Apptmart, which is a part of $2 million Appware Technologies, had around six merchants on board. By the time the Covid-19 pandemic receded, they were able to cross Rs 30 lakh annually in revenue and expanded to markets such as the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (US).
The evolution in local shops began when payment gateways such as PayTM became popular and required people to scan QR codes to pay. Apptmart’s growth story supports market data, such as digital commerce business Payoneer which predicted in 2020 that India’s e-commerce penetration would reach “64.8 per cent (920 million people) by 2023”. In 2019, McKinsey had said in a report that India was “well on its way to becoming a digitally advanced country. Propelled by the falling cost and rising availability of smartphones and high-speed connectivity, India is already home to one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing bases of digital consumers and is digitising faster than many mature and emerging economies”.
During the pandemic, when offline retail outlets and service centres were either closed or witnessed very little footfall, the importance of digitisation hit home deeper for them. By carrying their business online, the shops could enable customers to order from home, have regular statistics about the movement of products and details about loyal and repeat customers, among others. According to Apptmart, their clients have increased their conversion rate by 25 per cent.
The Apptmart platform is designed according to the gradients found in the local market. A promotional offer — geared towards new businesses or those testing the waters — comes for Rs 1,299 per month and enables one to upload 1,000 products to a website and have access to payment gateways, offer management and user management, among others. On the other end of the spectrum, the Premium Advanced plan, at Rs 10,399 per month, supports 10 staff accounts, up to five stores, campaign management, customised UI/UX support and social advertising, among others.
“The idea for Apptware started as a lifesaver solution because we were getting enquiries from people who wanted to build their application but did not have a budget. We had the passion and skills to create a platform that could enable people with little or no tech knowledge to go online and start a business. We kept the initial cost very low and designed it as a DIY solution. Now, local businesses can get quickly integrated, go online in two or three minutes and start uploading product photographs and details such as price,” says Rohokale.
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