E-commerce industry hits the right note by retailing musical instruments

Some time in 2006, online musical instruments seller Bajaao.com received what seemed to be an order from an almost unknown place. The request for a high-end electric guitar had come from East Garo Hills, Meghalaya, and the nearest post office was 16 km from the buyer’s residence. Yet, the company processed the order. The music lover walked and took public transport to collect the instrument he had no chance of ever getting in Meghalaya.

“It was an exception back then. Today, it is the norm. We get a lot of orders from remote places,” says Ashutosh Pande, founder and CTO of Bajaao, which now ships instruments across the world from its Mumbai warehouse. Its online transactions increased nearly 200 per cent last fiscal with almost 70 per cent repeat buyers.

In Mumbai, over-150-year-old music retailer Furtados, too, has transitioned to the online segment in a bid to cater to the growing demand. “The orders we get are a mix of those from metros and Tier II III cities. Online is showing the fastest growth among our business segments,” says Joseph Gomes, Director, Furtados Music, which has 21 retail stores across 10 cities in India.

It is not only those in far-flung areas who are ordering online. For the sheer convenience that comes with just clicking a few buttons and not stepping out of the house, people in metros are also buying online. “We have sold online to a buyer just a few hundred meters from our store,” points out Gomes, who, along with his three siblings, joined his father’s business in the 1990s.

As things stand, music lovers have found a new way of buying their prized instruments in an easier manner. Udipta Phukan, a student in Guwahati, says when her parents were in college, they had go to Kolkata for buying instruments as there weren’t any available locally. “I am luckier. My friends and I, who are part of the college music band, order our instruments online instead of travelling to Kolkata,” she says.

Given the rising demand, even marketplaces such as Amazon and Flipkart are selling musical instruments. But most of them are entry-level products, largely suitable for beginners. Big-ticket purchases are mostly made through specialised music websites or offline.

According to market estimates, there are only about 110 music instrument retailers catering to over 39,000 pin codes in the country. “There is a huge gap. The logical way for us was to go online. We offer free shipping across the country,” says Pande, whose company partners with region-specific local courier networks to deliver the items.

Bajaao, started in 2005, is one of the earliest players to go online. It began with just 10 orders a week and today processes over 500 requests per day. The average transaction value is ₹9,000, indicating the growing demand from online buyers. It hopes to close this fiscal with a gross merchandise value of over ₹100 crore.

Bajaao sources its products from craftsmen across the country and sells them under its Ultimate Guru brand. Furtados retails brands such as Yamaha, Korg, Gibson, Fender, Mapex, Pearl Drums, Takamine, Zildjian, Taylor Guitars and D’Addario Strings. So who are the online buyers? They are not professionals musicians who prefer to buy directly from retailers or distributors. The buyers are mostly in the 16-35 age group; but Bajaao is going after those between 25 and 35 as they are the medium-range to premium buyers. “We are focusing on this segment because people in the younger age group will buy entry-level products that are not very profitable because the average ticket-size is low,” Pande says.

Despite its robust online presence, Bajaao executes bigger orders offline for those from professional bands, educational institutions, official establishments and the likes. It would ideally prefer to have an offline retail presence too. “But octroi and other taxes make it unviable. When GST is implemented, we may have a flagship store in Mumbai,” Pande says.

And GST is what even Furtados is waiting for. “Currently, we can’t ship to a lot of places, and we don’t have warehouses across the country; that is a challenge. When GST comes in, it will make a big difference to our online sales,” adds Gomes.

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