Why Big Data is a Game Changer for the Indian eCommerce Industry

Late one evening, a bunch of data miners at travel portal Goibibo figured out that their customers booked tickets largely on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Leveraging this insight, the company created exciting offers and pushed them across all their channels around the same time. And voila! Sales figures jumped by a whopping 25-30%.

Working on similar lines, eCommerce giant Flipkart analyzes 25 mn rows of inventory data every day to enable data-driven decision-making. Likewise, other leading companies like Snapdeal and HomeShop18 claim they generate 30-40% of their orders with the help of big data tools they use.

Certainly, the game of big data is growing bigger. Almost every major eCommerce firm today is trying to crunch numbers and analyze customer behavior to craft out the best strategies to push sales.

According to the research firm Gartner, India is one of the fastest growing eCommerce markets, growing at approximately 60-70% every year. With major players showering their customers with huge discounts and big deals, as well as global players like Amazon entering the fray, the competition is truly fierce. Beyond these intensely fought

online battles, at the backend of every eCommerce firm, you will find a team of analysts working hard, analyzing every bit of information to discover new ways to stay ahead of

their competitors.

"Big data tools are allowing online businesses to decipher customer preferences—which products are witnessing maximum demand, what are the likely future trends, what price points are likely to engage with customers, etc. It enables better marketing by pushing relevant and contextual promotional content to the target markets based on their purchase/browsing history" —Sanjay Sethi, CEO, ShopClues.com

"The major role of data analytics tools is personalized recommendation. We have a total of 14 properties like ‘Viewers also viewed’, ‘similar products’, ‘Trending Now,’ etc, now on the site and all the big data platforms when put together influence 40% of the orders we receive today," Amitabh Misra, CTO, Snapdeal

RIDING THE BIG DATA WAVE

Realizing the immense potential, more and more eCommerce players are turning to data to get answers to several business-critical questions like when to run a promotion, how to segment customers, how to do more effective marketing, etc.

“The analytical tools help retailers in predicting what kind of traffic they will have, which channels will get how much traffic, and if promotions are going on, which platforms

are going to be more stretched than others,” states Amitabh Mishra, CTO, Snapdeal.

Right from developing better products or marketing campaigns to gaining deeper insights into customer behavior and industry trends, eCommerce companies are placing huge bets on big data analysis to gain a competitive edge.

“Companies are leveraging the power of big data to better engage with its customers. They are tracking user behavior across various online channels and collecting and analyzing data from all these channels to determine most appropriate ways to acquire new customers and retain existing customers,” says Dharmesh Godha, President and CTO, Advaiya.com.

Resonating the same thought, Anurag Rajpal, CEO and Director, American Swan says, “The retailers need to know three things: How effective their pricing is, when shoppers are most active, and what items they buy together. These key insights can be derived from big data.”

"eCommerce companies are left with no other choice but to embrace big data to serve their customers better. The companies are collecting data through various touchpoints

and then process this information to carry out customer segmentation and thus push out personalized content and promotions," Rajiv Kumar, CEO and Founder, StoreHippo.com

Right from how customers navigate the site, to the products

they choose, and their action/response to visual and technical

triggers, BI tools have a big role to play in all our operational and planning needs. The deployment of analytics tools has increased our conversion rate by 30-40%," Sundeep Malhotra

Founder and CEO, HomeShop18.

"We are using analytics in right from the crea tion of our product to understand how the traffic is moving, what kind of transactions are happening, where we should try to target consumer more, etc. From the sales perspective, 25-30% of the overall transactions today are getting influenced by the big data platforms," Vikalp Sahni, CTO, Goibibo.

"For us, eCommerce is ‘data-driven eCommerce.’ The retailers need to know three things: How effective their pricing is, when shoppers are most active, and what items they buy

together. These key insights can be derived from big data," Anurag Rajpal, CEO and Director, American Swan.