Wooplr’s Lean Social Marketplace: Business Challenges
In June 2018, Wooplr Technologies Private Limited (Wooplr) disrupted India’s e-commerce space by pioneering the social-commerce revolution. With a vision to create the first social-commerce unicorn business in India, the Bengaluru-based start-up brought social-sellers, consumers and fashion brands together on its platform.
Wooplr was established in March 2012 – by Arjun Zacharia (CEO), Ankit Sabharwal (CTO), Praveen Rajaretnam and Soumen Sarkar – as a fashion content website. Later, it morphed into an Instagram-like platform for women’s fashion (curating products from physical and online stores) and by 2018, it became India’s first notable and thriving social-commerce network.
Business Model
Wooplr encouraged people to setup their own store on its website at zero investment to sell apparel, accessories, etc., driven through their social network (with 100 or more followers). Individuals could create a store and add products (from 50,000 products of 300 brands featured on Wooplr) to their store. They could then share product details through their social network and influence people to purchase it..............
Building an “Influencer” Platform
As people are more likely to buy when their friends recommend a product, Wooplr built a community of social-sellers and supported them with end-to-end e-commerce support – including brands/products, technology and payment platform, delivery/returns and customer care. In short, Wooplr crowdsourced demand through influencers, supply from marketplaces, and fulfilment through third parties, and built a ‘lean social marketplace.’.............
Disruption
Wooplr was primarily dependent on its seller network for marketing and sales, thus incurring near-zero expenditure on its marketing and customer acquisition. Marketplaces work on a traditional cost-per-sale model. Arjun claimed that while 93% of Myntra’s sales come from just 7% of brands, at Wooplr, 40% of sales come from 60% of brands.............
Business Challenges
Wooplr has 200,000 monthly active users on its platform, of which only 7% actively post. To increase sales, the primary challenge for Arjun lies in increasing their active user base (especially influencers), as 200,000 in a population of 1.3 billion is a minute share.............
However, in April 2019, Wooplr was struggling to find investors and due to lack of capital had paused its operations since mid-April. A source from the company said, “Wooplr’s biggest cost at present is the technology backend and logistics. So, it continues to spend extensively on its technology backend integrated with Google and logistics partner Delhivery................
Assignment Questions
I. What is Social Commerce? Debate on its advantages or disadvantages over traditional e-commerce. Discuss Wooplr’s Business model.
II. ..............
Exhibits
Exhibit I: Wooplr’s Business Model
Exhibit II: Wooplr and Competitors (2017-18)