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Online retail store Jaypore.com plans to build a presence offline as well. The start-up, founded in late 2011 by Shilpa Sharma and Puneet Chawla, curates traditional handicraft products from weavers, groups and designers.
The portal gets around 15,000-30,000 visitors a day. It sources items from over 20 states in the country, ranging from cotton fabric from Phulia, kantha from Murshidabad, kalamkari from Machlipatnam to silks from Bhagalpur, among others.
On setting up an offline presence, Chawla said, “There is a big segment of customers, which wants to buy these kinds of products but is not comfortable buying online, especially apparel. In the long run, we definitely see ourselves being present offline in some shape. But, whether it will be a big flagship store or presence in a multi-branded outlet remains to be seen.”
The portal can then also cash in on the brand visibility which comes with being offline, Sharma added. The company plans to raise $10 million for brand building, technology upgradation, developing its private label and building corresponding supply chains. “We are now in talks with a few investors and hope to close a round of funding in the next 2-3 months,” Chawla told BusinessLine .
The start-up had kicked off with ₹3 crore funding from angel investor Haresh Chawla, former CEO of Network18. This has been the only funding till date. The portal broke even in the first year of operations. It closed last financial year (Apr 2014 to Mar 2015) with about ₹15 crore in sales.
The firm, which started out with a focus on the Indian Diaspora in the US, later realised the importance of the domestic market. At present, 70 per cent revenue comes from India. It ships products across apparel, silver jewellery, art, among others, to over 15 countries.
“The number of transactions varies as the festival period is our peak sales season. On an average, we get 150 to 300 transactions a day,” Sharma said, adding that silver jewellery, sarees and apparel accounts for the chunk of sales.
The portal is optimistic on the size of the handicraft market. “The market is huge and under penetrated because of distribution challenges,” Chawla said. But, certain policy tweaks could go a long way in ease of doing business, especially clarity on the FDI in e-commerce business, he added.
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