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Companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities or niche, and cut-throat competition turns the ocean bloody; hence, the term “red oceans”
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Challenges, Solutions and Best Practices of Cross-border E-Commerce
eUniMart organized a crossborder e-commerce workshop in Delhi on June 16 at the Russian Center for Science and Culture. Crossborder e-commerce has never been easy and eUniMart aims are taking Indian sellers to the global market by making them aware of the benefits of selling globally. This workshop was designed to educate and guide the sellers on what is the market scenario and what they as Indian sellers should concentrate on to make the global market their playground. The event was attended by 55 sellers, there were 7 presentations and 12 marketplaces were featured. The workshop addressed three major areas: • Logistics • Payments • Translations
The hosts started the event by quoting a few facts: • India contributes only 0.8% to the cross border market and the target is to increase this percentage to 10% by 2018. • Indian sellers need to optimize their price behavior to be more competitive. • The markets that are hungry for e-commerce are North America, Europe and the Middle East, and surprisingly a majority of countries in these regions are non-English speaking and prefer to buy products listed in their language only. Shayak Mazumdar, the CEO and Co-founder of eUniMart went on to talk about how he and the other founders (most of them from the e-commerce and cross-border marketplace sector) decided that it is time to give back to the Indian economy and promote Indian made products in the global market.
He went on to speak about the Blue Ocean Strategy1 and explained how Indian sellers are poised at a junction where they can influence the market and sale of competitive products. We also got to see how the eUniMart platform will assist sellers in marketing their products, provide analytics and become a one-stop solution for all cross-border e-commerce marketplaces. Post this session, the audience was educated on effective solutions to the biggest pain area in e-commerce—Logistics. Ravi Manhass, VP Operation & Logistics Management gave a detailed presentation on the challenges of shipping products. He also went on to explain that there is a lot to be desired with respect to the legal framework for e-commerce exports. An interesting tip during this session was about ensuring that all export packages are labeled accurately so that they are not held up at International Customs. Again, translation plays a crucial role in ensuring that there is no miscommunication. He ended his presentation on a positive note where he assured the participants that the Government of India would announce a new policy for e-commerce exports, which will benefit all sellers.
Haneet Kaushal from Ebay, India spoke at length about the potential, size and growth of outbound crossborder e-commerce from India. He showcased an example of a leather jacket manufacturer who grew from a 3 member to a 50 member team by exporting his products via Ebay. Ebay also ensures that language barriers are eliminated and assists the sellers in providing descriptions in different languages. They also encourage their users/buyers to provide feedback in a language of their choice. Ebay strongly believes that people will buy what they can read and understand. This session was aptly followed by an educative session on how sellers can have a win-win situation by translating their products for global visibility and sales. The presentation emphasized on the importance of localization of products for increasing conversions. This was enumerated with proven examples of sellers who had gone from being small SMEs to large enterprise sellers through translating their products into various languages. Sellers were also given information on how Mayflower can help them re-write their product descriptions so that during translation SEO-specific terms can be used to increase the search visibility of their products.
During the discussion, it was clear that the sellers were keen on understanding the competition they face in the global markets and the market potential for their products in these markets. Mayflower has a unique service aptly named “Competitive Intelligence” that helps collect, consolidate and analyze data from competition/other sellers in various geographies. This data is then used to strategize and derive solutions for the global market. Finally, sellers were given an exclusive preview on how domain based corpus, AI powered machine translation services with the proofreading, and editing of content by e-commerce subject matter experts (SMEs) can propel them towards global success. Payments and secure transfer of money is something that is always of concern to the sellers. Gaurav Shisodia, Director – Business development, Payoneer spoke about the various risks and challenges associated with repatriating payments from across various markets.
He also focused on the advantages of Payoneer over other services. He went on to provide an example of how a seller with exclusive products failed to succeed in the European market because they selected a payment portal that was not localized. The buyer did not feel secure to pay through a portal that did not provide an interface in their language. The final session again touched upon logistic, which seems to be the elephant in the room. Sanjeev Choudhary, VP – International DTDC Express Ltd. spoke at length about both inbound and outbound logistics from India. Sanjeev also answered many questions on the different shipping methods, regulations surrounding logistics and the best practices as well as cost effective methods in logistics. The session ended with Shayak and Dibyendu summarizing the best practices, challenges, solutions and the future of cross-border e-commerce. The participants also expressed their views on global selling and felt reassured that eUniMart was available with all its partners to provide the best solutions to make them global market winners.
