KartRocket Launches C2C Mobile Marketplace: Kraftly

KartRocket has launched Kraftly – India’s first C2C mobile marketplace for unique and hand crafted products, which so far have been available largely offline.  These items cover a wide range, including art, home & living, apparel, fashion accessories, costume jewelry, craft supplies, food, bath and beauty products, toys and unique products.

“There are over $50 Mn homepreneurs, artisans and flea market sellers that currently have no avenue to sell online except for unorganized channels such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Further, a large number of consumers have no place to discover such eclectic products except in an offline setting. Kraftly wants to become the one-stop shop to cater to both these audiences.” said Saahil Goel, CEO of Kraftly.

The app follows a model of an open marketplace which allows any seller – online or offline – to create their “microshop” in seconds and start selling, without requiring any paperwork. Buyers are able to discover unique products in a personalized manner and directly interact with sellers. Kraftly completely manages payments and logistics for each seller, thereby allowing the long tail of small and home sellers to go online.

Kraftly is owned by KartRocket, a privately held company based in New Delhi, India and co-founded by Saahil Goel and Gautam Kapoor in 2012.

Company charges only 5% per order that a seller receives through Kraftly. Also, buyers can directly deposit money into the seller’s wallet, makes the transaction extremely transparent and relatively cheaper than what consumers used to pay.

Shop owners can also use the app as a “point of sale” system for walk-in customers and use it for accepting credit and debit cards in their shops instantly by signing up on the app.

To enhance user experience for buyers in certain categories such as – food items, home décor, bulky goods and plants, Kraftly allows users to search and browse for products using location as a filter.

“Our unique model allows us to represent the seller and create a venue for sellers to easily conduct business with convenience. We strongly support the small seller community and have planned several initiatives around the same in the coming year. Currently we have over 1500 category leaf nodes and over 6 lac products from 2000+ sellers for a buyer to choose from. We expect that in 6 months we will have over 5 Lac sellers on the platform and have close to 30-40 Lac SKUs” said Saahil Goel.

As ecommerce continues to boom in India (projected at 15x growth in 5 years), consumers will demand such artsy and eclectic products through the online channel as well.  Currently access to these products is limited to offline exhibitions and craft fairs and has a limited consumer reach.  Globally, there are couple of players operating in this space, these include Etsy, Artquid, Artulis, Craftori and many more.

Commenting on the future plans, Saahil said, “With Kraftly we intend to change how C2C transactions work in India. The initial response to the app has been tremendous. We have been listed in ‘Trending’, ‘Top New Free’ categories already in Google play store; have signed up 2000+ sellers in a week of its launch. Currently the app is available only for android users with iOS coming out in the next 7-10 days.”