Meesho and the Rise of Social Commerce

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Meesho Social commerce using Whatsapp and Facebook marketplace

How Meesho utilized social network to empower women entrepreneurship

Recently during a discussion with a friend, Meesho’s business model came up as a topic. The one aspect which surprised was, that Meesho uses Whatsapp to sell its product, instead of directly selling it on its platform. In an era where most platforms want to increase the stickiness of their tools, how is a company affording to build a business on other platforms? Meesho’s platforms amaze many, but there is a well-thought-out plan behind this business, let’s find out.

Ideation of Meesho

Vidit Aatrey, an IIT alumnus, along with his friend Sanjeev Barnwal planned to set up their own startup. In 2015, they started conceptualizing an idea in the fashion space. They came up with Fashnear, a hyperlocal startup in the fashion startup. This startup planned to follow the O2O model (online to offline). Fashnear as a business idea could not take off. However, it did provide some valuable insights to Fashnear team.

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What made TikTok Successful?

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Secret behind TikTok Success

Global rush for buying TikTok – explained

TikTok is buzzing despite being banned or on the verge of being banned. Tiktok post its launch in 2016, has seen its popularity charts scaling new heights. Its presence in 150+ countries has helped it become a global phenomenon. Despite all its shortcomings on privacy invasion, there is a huge rush to buy out TikTok. Let’s find out why mega technology companies have lined up their cash to acquire a toddler star.

A brief History of TikTok

Chinese engineer and serial entrepreneur Zhang Yiming started a company called ByteDance. ByteDance’s initial product was Toutiao (Chinese for Headlines), which is a news headlines aggregator.  Zhang always wanted to have a border-less product, which was truly global. Bytedance further in 2016 introduced TikTok, a short video format consumer app. For the uninitiated, TikTok basically allows users to create 15-second videos using a huge repository of lip syncs. These lip syncs would generally include famous songs and dialogues. Consumers on the other end, could endlessly binge-watch these videos, which were combination of these lip syncs and a small act shot usually on phone. The endless in the last statement is not an exaggeration.1 Million+ videos were watched daily, for over a year on TikTok.

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Start-up innovation in Digital Kirana

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How Local innovation is fueling India's storefront

How local innovation is fueling Indian storefronts.

Digital Kirana is the buzzword in the Indian retail segment. Languishing storefronts could see a strong disruption coming with the aid of technology. In the previous article, we saw how mega-companies like Reliance, Amazon, and Metro have started to make in-roads in this segment. These companies have forayed in this segment very recently. A few startups, however, have already lead innovation in this space since 2012. Some unique and market fit solutions have been evangelized. Let’s look at some of these challenger start-ups who are leading the face-lift of traditional Kirana stores.

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Giant push for Digital Kirana – The big players

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How Amazon, Metro and Jio plan to change the retail landscape in India

In the recently concluded AGM of India’s largest company Reliance Industries Limited, major announcements were made. One of the highlights of this most viewed corporate event was to digitize the local storefronts in India. Launch of Reliance Digital Kirana initiative could lead to re-birth of otherwise disregarded Kirana stores. Let’s look at how Kirana store’s common problems and how mega retail companies plan to solve them.

Problem Areas of Kirana Stores

Local storefronts in India also known as Kirana stores have had a tough time in the recent past. With many e-commerce aggregators and shopping malls, Kirana stores faced a steep fall in revenue. Considering their small shops and not well-planned inventory added to a poor experience, further pushing away retail customers. Manual billing was always a challenge and GST introduction in 2017 added to their vows. The 12 Million plus retail stores were left to their fates.

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Real synergies of Societe Generale acquiring Shine

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Societe Generale, a French multinational bank, declared the acquisition of a neo-banking startup called Shine. This is the second major acquisition by the French multi-national bank in the last 3 years. Societe Generale may not be on an acquisition spree, but both these acquisitions align with their digital strategy. Let’s look at some of the synergies and how they stack up against the long term plan laid out.

A Brief Background of SocGen

Societe Generale (also abbreviated as SocGen), is one of the three oldest banks in France. SocGen is 150 year old organization, founded in 1864. SocGen faced a tough start to the 21st century with Financial crises and scandals. The financial crisis and scandals left a dent on reputation. Around the same time millennial requirement for convenience were not easy to meet. The old existing IT infrastructure of BFSI needed a digital revamp. Like all BFSI moving towards digital transformation, SocGen also adopted the digital transformation route. Their digital transformation strategy has 3 formative steps, with the last one being Disruption. One key ingredient of this last step mentioned is – It involves reassessing the way the company does business to identify its unique capability or skill, its core competency. Soc Gen is ready to adopt the ways and methods of newcomers

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