ezmall targets over 10X growth this Diwali, says Amit Bansal

Omni-channel video commerce start-up ezmall.com uses video content to deliver a shopping experience that comes closest to the physical touch and feel option. This makes video commerce very relevant to the next hundred million (NHM) customers, who are heavy content consumers. Video content is a big influence on their lifestyle - the product videos help NHMs make an assured purchasing decision. Amit Bansal, founder and chief executive officer, ezmall.com, in an interaction with DNA Money, discusses the company’s differentiated business model, target customers, business performance and growth plans.

How has the growth journey been since inception?

We started the journey in December 2016 and opened ezmall for customers in August 2017. The business was set up to deliver positive unit economics from day one. A 40% month-on-month user growth is a validation of our product fitment to the market. Approximately, 70% of our customers are from non-metros or Tier-II and -III markets.

In October we will ship more than 5,00,000 units, which is over 10x growth over last October. Increase in month-on-month user growth is a good indicator of business model scalability as is healthy unit economics. The margins from operations more than cover all costs except headquarter and marketing. We are unit economics positive.

What problem is being addressed by the firm?

We are solving commerce for the next hundred million (NHM) customers via- videos, curated merchandise and vernacular voice assistance. A majority of NHMs are based beyond metros (Tier-I, -II and -III cities). Their purchasing decisions are influenced to a great extent by what they watch on videos. They, however, need assistance and reassurance to be able to transact, in the absence of touch and feel option.

Where can customers shop from ezmall.com?

We are a video-based commerce platform and our customer can transact with us across all popular video platforms. We are available on Facebook, our website www.ezmall.com, youtube channel, OTT (Zee5) and our 24/7 television channel. Additionally, customers have the flexibility to Interact and transact with us in their preferred language through the 24/7 call centre. Our objective is to simplify the commerce for NHM.

What are the advantages of video commerce?

India has 450 million connected users and growing. Affordable data has caused a mini-explosion in video consumption. NHM users are using the internet for social connectivity and entertainment/ videos majorly. The video is the first port of call for the NHMs. Integrating commerce with video content will establish a connect with the NHM users. With time video and commerce will converge - and videos will become core to commerce. We at ezmall are betting on this and building technologies that we will help us stay at the cutting edge of video commerce. Tap and checkout, wherein a user can tap on the product within a video to shop is an example.

We are seeing great user engagement on Facebook videos and FB Live for ezmall. We are already integrated with Zee5 and are partnering on interesting models to enable commerce on OTT. We are working to create a seamless omnichannel experience wherein a user will be able to transition at any point across channels.

What kind of customer retention are you seeing?

Over the last couple of months, one in every four orders come from our existing customers i.e. over 25% repeat rate. This plus an excellent user growth is a good validation of our product fitment to a focused market. Our product returns are under 5%, which is well below the e-commerce average.

Will you raise fresh funding? 

We have raised a total of $15 million over two rounds from promoters of Essel Group. Given our growth (and capital efficiency) there has been a lot of interest from potential partners. If we come across a partner who shares our philosophy i.e. capital efficient hyper-growth, we shall be happy to engage.