NANDINI VAIDYANATHAN discusses the expanse of what in essence, makes a business ‘online’ in nature
We were buying watermelon a couple of days back from a roadside vendor. We used to see him regularly on our evening walks, but he had gone missing for over a month. So I asked him if he had ‘gone home’ (assuming he was a migrant to Bangalore). He said no madam, five of us have started a Whatsapp group to sell different fruits online. So I am not going to be here from tomorrow.
I couldn’t help smiling at this new face of India. I am pretty sure he has never been to school. But he spoke words like Whatsapp, Online, with so much ease that I marveled at the reach and power of internet. Also, I noticed something else. There was pride in his voice that he was now part of a new elite technology class. He was no longer the marginalized street vendor.
If there is one reason, apart from the usual ones of convenience, asset-lightness, speed of growth etc., for the internet to have captured the imagination of the common man, it is the glamour quotient associated with it. So, what is online business?
The simplest and most meaningful definition is any company that engages in the business of buying and selling goods and services over the internet is an online business. If you want to academically nitpick, you can distinguish between an online business and an Ecommerce business.
Typically, if you are referring to a company, you say it is an online business. Eg., Razorpay is an online business, that is, their market presence is using the internet. If you are referring to the activities of a company, you may say they are an Ecommerce business. Eg., Amazon is an Ecommerce business, that is, they sell goods and services on their website/app which is powered by internet. For all practical purposes, the two refer to the same thing, that is without internet there is no business.
Online business also includes companies that deploy digital marketing strategies and mobile payment gateways. So you could be a physical store but if your store footfall is directed by your presence and awareness creation on platforms like Instagram, you’d still be termed as an online business. Similarly, at checkout, if your customers can pay on your QR code instead of cash, you’d be an online business.
Since 2006, post the dotcom bust, internet has captured the imagination of humans (possibly only cinema had aroused people as much) in a manner that no one, not even the father of internet, Vint Cerf, could have predicted and scripted. Cerf had said that his role was to create infrastructure, he along with Bob Kahn developed the famous TCP/IP protocols that govern how data moves through the network. I remember chatting up with K. Vaitheeswaran, the father of Ecommerce in India, many years ago, as to why he founded Fabmart.com in as early as 1999 when there was hardly any internet in India and he said to me that the possibilities of the internet in Ecommerce blew his mind. Unfortunately, it was also an idea way ahead of its time and the company which was rebranded as indiaplaza.com no longer exists.
So what does doing business online do to your business that being offline doesn’t? Listing below a few obvious ones:
1. You can grow your customers and thereby your revenue at the speed of lightening.
2. You can know your customers’ likes and dislikes, buying habits, preferences and fetishes perhaps more intimately than their own family members.
3. Once you know your customers, you can pander to their taste with precision.
4. You can engage with them without allowing them to take you off their radar.
5. You can not only delight them by giving them what they want but by giving them what they didn’t even know they wanted.
6. And now that they have it, they want to be delighted by being surprised constantly, and you can do that without spending an arm and a leg.
7. You can recruit new customers without being bound by geographical boundaries.
8. You can create awareness of your products, you can sell your products, and you can brand your products through digital strategies that are on point, without wastage of resources.
9. You can buy/sell online by providing instant, secure and convenient payment gateways on mobiles. Paytm was the prime mover in mobile payments that revolutionised this space. Today even a streetside vendor has a QR code hoisted on his cart!
You can go on and on. In today’s context, ECommerce businesses have become more capital-intensive than offline businesses. Their expanding footprint has necessitated deep pockets, squeezed margins and lower profits, and longer gestation to profitability. This, in fact, is what adds to their glamour quotient − that to be recognized as a significant Ecommerce business you have to unlock some seriously hefty moves to stay ahead of the curve.
Once upon a time, there was a lot of noise about online businesses decimating offline businesses, especially small vendors. Even big companies saw the two as either-or, not as AND. But today small vendors have learnt to innovate in order to hold on to their customers and large offline businesses actively promote their online channel. We were shopping at a large Decathlon store last week and at one point I nearly lost my cool because the sales person kept saying ‘go to our online store madam’ for everything that I asked – product, size, colour, design,and brand choices! It seemed like he was desperate to get rid of me! Online businesses can be conducted through various technology media.
The popular ones are website, mobile app, Whatsapp, and Instagram Shop. The medium you choose is determined by your budget outlay, the size of the market you wish to capture, your business model for customer acquisition and growth and your hunger as an entrepreneur. The typical businesses that gravitate towards selling online are education (online classes and books), fashion, quaint and quirky products, jewelry, home décor, health and nutrition, music and pop culture, etc.
Online businesses are here to stay. They are also here to co-habit peacefully – the giants and the gnomes, the glamorous and the every-day products, the necessary and the impulsive, the must-have and the good to-have. Online businesses are essential because of the democratised access to products and services that they give to humans.
