App-only Strategy? Some Should Think Again

So another ecommerce player is going the app-only way. Flipkart has now decided that it will go the Myntra way, and become app-only by September this year. I had written earlier about Myntra's move in a blog post and why it makes sense for this company to be app-only. You can read the same here. Well, although Myntra reported a 10% dip in its revenue after the D-date, I am still convinced that this strategy will work for the company. One of the sole reasons for this is that Myntra is essentially a vertical ecommerce player. If someone has to buy a dress or an accessory, Myntra has got tremendous collection at good prices to lure the customer in. And frankly, there are no other players who are as good as Myntra when it comes to fashion and accessory shopping.

There have been many reasons cited by many experts when Myntra had first announced about the change in strategy, like low penetration of internet, slow internet speed in the country, trust issues during mobile payments etc. These have been revived again with the announcement from Flipkart. Though I am not refuting any of the above points, but I believe these issues are not going to be there forever and things will evolve. They always do. What I am concerned are 2 aspects which one should consider when thinking about an app-only strategy, especially a horizontal player.

1. There is a big difference between vertical and horizontal ecommerce players and a one-size-fits-all strategy may not work at all. Especially in a market like India. These marketplaces, namely Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and PayTm, house nearly everything you have ever thought of buying. There was a time around 1-2 years back when a new wave was sweeping Indian ecommerce industry with manufacturers going for exclusive tie-ups with ecommerce companies. Flipkart had pioneered it with its announcements with Motorola and Xiaomi. Soon other players rushed doing the same, with Micromax and OnePlus choosing one ecommerce player over the other. However, this trend has slowly lost steam and companies like Xiaomi and OnePlus have put their wares in a competing warehouse as well now. One sole reason for this is to reach as many customers as possible. The fallout of this is that even the little bit of exclusivity which was available to these players is slowly fading away. Every product is available at every other site. A potential customer will buy a product from a site he is most comfortable with at that point of time. He is certainly not going to waste his time and data on downloading an app, when at the same time he can use that data in viewing another ecommerce player site and, possibly, completing the whole transaction. He is not concerned too much on the discounts (which are reducing these days anyway), but more concerned about the choices he can get at the time he wants them. Not having a mobile site and a desktop site seriously hampers a player's ability to capture that customer. It can work in a vertical player's business, like Myntra's, but an app-only strategy stands on a very weak footing for a horizontal player.

2. Despite some of the problems and challenges listed above (like internet penetration etc), the biggest challenge for Indian players can come from the ubiquitous Google. Google has already announced its intentions of bringing a 'buy' button in its search results. This same feature is already available for flight bookings in India (read my previous post on this here). Imagine searching for a product on Google, and the search results show the product along with prices and buy button from 3 players (competitors) and your site is not listed, just because you don't have a site anymore and only have an app. Let's think that even though Flipkart doesn't have a site, Google still gives the search results including listing from Flipkart along with Snapdeal and others. Still, if a customer clicks on the Flipkart link, it will prompt for either opening the app or downloading the same. That too, if the customer is on a tablet or phone while browsing. If, by chance, he is on a laptop (and there is considerable possibility for this), even the app-download option won't be there. And all the talks about 'seamless buying experience' and 'comfortable user experience' stand for nothing more than mere words. The "problem" of Google won't be gone, whatever happens in the ecommerce space. The best way for the players to tackle this is to turn this apparent problem to an asset. And that is possible when you keep open all the avenues (app, mobile site, desktop site, smartwatch option).

As I said earlier, an app-only strategy still makes sense but not for all the players. A Myntra, UrbanLadder, PepperTap, BlueStone can afford to think about the above strategy and potentially be available only as an app, but horizontal players can hardly afford this luxury anymore. It may lead to customer stickiness for a small section of buyers, a big section may totally avoid the troubles of downloading an app and instead do a Google search instead.

Please comment your thoughts below. Tweet to me at @NishantSinha88.

Outrage for the sake of outraging?

We Indians are a funny lot. We love to live life the way we want. We are not the uber-perfect nation, and frankly, to borrow a quote from Rang De Basanti, no nation is perfect. But we are happy to be in this country, despite some shortcomings, if any. We love to make fun of other nations. More so, we even make fun of people of our own country if they don't belong to our city or state. People from northeast would definitely vouch for the same. But nothing unites us more than 2 things in this world: Pakistan and Cricket. I will reserve my opinion about how Pakistan unites us in this piece but we will turn our attention to Cricket and a not-so-distant country, Bangladesh.

So, we got beaten by Bangladesh in cricket last month. Though not for the first time in cricket matches, but for the first time we lost a bilateral series. A big deal for the cricket-crazy nation, as you must have guessed. But, we downplayed the event to excessive cricket being played by our cricketers since the start of the Australian series last year, to new players trying to cement their place in the team and taking time in doing so. There were occasional praises for Bangladesh as well, and maybe the Indian fans just praised the neighbors so as to avoid being called sore-losers and cocky. But all hell broke loose when a Bangladeshi media house put up a picture of their new sensational hero, Mustafizur Rehman, fancying a 'cutter' or a 'razor' with some Indian players shown as half-bald, including test captain Virat Kohli and ODI/T20 captain MS Dhoni. How could they do it, have they not got any shame or respect, this is outrageous...these were some of the responses (toned-down) in the Indian social media and other channels. One Mumbai radio channel even went to the extreme of asking the Bangladeshi media house to apologize to Indian cricket fans, who had got 'hurt by this senseless and tasteless act of Bangladesh'.

This one incident shows how feeble our strength is when it comes to taking a joke made on us. Twitter was overflowing with outrage against Bangladesh, with people tweeting about how India helped in the formation of Bangladesh in 1971 and how India is a father to Bangladesh. It seems like a big section of us haven't really grown up. When Star Sports made the unofficial anthem of 2015 World Cup in the form of 'Mauka Mauka' ads, it was all taken in the right spirit and some even added their own twists to those ads. If the current outrage is because of sudden outburst of patriotism in the people who are outraging against Bangladesh, where was it during the 'mauka' ads? Or where was it when the same channel called Bangladesh a kid in cricket during the build up to the above bilateral series?

I am not saying that one should keep quiet when someone says something about his/her country or countrymen. I am just saying we should learn taking fun in the same vein in which we make fun of others. And not carry a false sense of patriotism with ourselves. For starters, there is a lot to change with ourselves and our society as well. The constant discrimination against a dark-skinned person and a sudden spurt in confidence after applying a fairness cream shows the kind of thinking we have developed. Maybe the Bangladeshi ad was not in good taste, maybe our own was not either, but let's stop outraging for the sake of outraging. There may be real issues on our hand which will benefit more if we channel our attention and energy towards them.