Can Fintech Company Suvidhaa Make A Dent In Indian Ecommerce?

Mumbai-based fintech company Suvidhaa Infoserve has announced its plans to venture into ecommerce through clearance sales.

Newly launched marketplace, Suvideals.ooo, which is under beta testing with close group of users, will reportedly focus on selling only one branded product per day at highly attractive liquidation prices until inventory lasts.

The platform aims to tap “bottom of pyramid customers” by giving them competitive deals for the price-conscious customers, especially in semi-urban and rural markets in the country. The marketplace will be launched on the technology platform it acquired from Infibeam Avenues Ltd last year.

“Suvidhaa through its network of 91,000 plus retail outlets across India and with a combination of state-of-art online platform will now enable engagement of larger customer base including millions of customers acquired from Infibeam,” the company said.

“We plan to offer single branded products per day to the customer,” said Paresh Rajde, founder, Suvidhaa Infoserve. Suvideals.ooo will be a mix of online and offline, where clearance/ liquidation products would be sold as flash sales where both traders and individuals can buy.

Formed in 2007, Suvidhaa Infoserve provides services and financial products through its partnerships with over 300 financial institutions and service providers. It provides facilities to make payments for a host of services like utility bill payment services, renewal insurance premium collection services, telecom, mobile, DTH recharges among other things.

The company claims to have over 91K tech-enabled retail outlets across over 4.5K pincodes in India. Suvidhaa claims to have 40 Mn customers.

Mostly the small business and traders or even individuals who are engaged in unorganised liquidation channels will be the target sellers on this new marketplace. The government has also been considering an ecommerce policy for the past few months, since the DPIIT has released the draft ecommerce policy in February.

The draft national ecommerce policy imposes stringent conditions on companies storing data outside the country like data stored abroad shall not be made available to other business entities outside India, for any purpose, even with the customer consent; data stored abroad shall not be made available to a third-party, for any purpose, even if the customer consents to it; a request from Indian authorities to have access to all such data stored abroad, shall be complied with immediately etc.

As the larger players such as Amazon and Flipkart handle fluttering ecommerce regulations as well as prepare themselves for entry of Reliance, the clearance sale online may gain good traction in the booming Indian ecommerce.