eCommerce in India - A blog by Darpan Munjal

I finally experienced it - the unevitable reality of staying in Delhi - a power cut! Sitting in the darkness, waiting for the generator to pickup, I thought - imagine you are asked to play a game of darts in a room that is pitch-dark. You throw the darts in all possible directions, hoping that atleast one of them will hit the bullseye. When the lights are switched on, you find out that although a couple of darts came close, most other ended up far away from the target. This sounds like a pointless exercise - however, the reality is that a lot of companies do this to their customers every day.

Most of the online retailers continue to focus on a “one size fits all” approach where they throw all kinds of offers and promotions at the customers, hoping that the customer will accept atleast one of them. This approach certainly works to some extent and can result in some moderate sales however, this is like throwing darts in different directions and then, later drawing bullseye around them, to feel good about one’s actions. Continue reading �

The other day I visited a website called Kaboodle.com which is an online shopping community where users can build, maintain and share online collections of their favorite products with other users. There is even a style compatibility test on the site where users can see how compatible they are with other users in terms of their shopping habits, taste and style. Since then, I have been thinking everyday about the role online communities will play in eCommerce and then it finally struck me Continue reading �

Having led the eCommerce team at Sears, I often reflect upon what helped us grow our online revenues from about $20 million in 1999 to almost $1 Billion in 2006? Although I do think that technology played a key role in that growth, it wasn’t the primary reason.

An incident during one of the Christmas seasons helped me answer this question. Christmas is the peak season in US for all retailers and majority of the online and B&M sales occur during this time frame. This is the time when kids hope that Santa will deliver all the toys that they wished for. The stakes are too high because one delayed shipment could mean a disappointed child who has been waiting for that toy for the entire year. So to set appropriate expectations, we added messaging on all our product pages telling the customers to place their orders before the cut off date to ensure Christmas delivery. However, few days before the Christmas Eve, our dashboards indicated that we would miss the Christmas shipment for about 300+ toy orders. We immediately formed a SWAT team and ensured that every single order was handled in a white glove fashion and shipped via overnight delivery. The team worked through the weekend to make this happen, and we certainly lost money on these orders. However we gained something really important Continue reading �

I often think about my shopping experience at an online retailer in US - Landsend.com. I purchased a shirt from this retailer using their web site. I typically do not purchase apparel online, because of concerns related to fit and quality. However, I liked the shirt and decided to purchase it. Although the purchase experience was great, the story doesn’t end here. One year later, I called them to purchase some additional clothes. At this point, I casually mentioned to the CSR that I wasn’t too happy with the quality of one of the shirts I purchased from them in the past. The CSR first apologized and then offered to send me a replacement for no additional charge. Since this incident, I have probably shopped with Lands’End atleast 8-10 times.

This incident got me thinking Continue reading �

I have been thinking for a long time to start a blog on eCommerce in India and finally decided to take the plunge. In this blog, I will be posting various topics around opportunities in eCommerce and some of the best practices that can take eCommerce in our country to the next level.

Before I begin this journey, let me introduce myself. My name is Darpan Munjal and I recently moved to India after working for about 12 years in retail industry within US. Most recently, I was the Divisional Vice President of eCommerce at Sears Holdings (a $55 Billion retailer) and my team was responsible for building some of the best in class eCommerce websites within the industry. Before joining Sears, I did eBusiness consulting within US and led the implementation of a number of high volume web sites.

My goal of building this blog is to share my experiences, learnings, successes and most importantly, the failures that were part of building one of the largest eCommerce sites in the world. I think there is a huge opportunity in India to take eCommerce to the next level and my hope is that our collective experiences, discussions and learnings on this blog will help build a community that can lead that change.