Singapore's Shopmatic wants more Indian merchants to sell online

Singapore's Shopmatic, which helps merchants to sell online through its 'do-it-yourself' (DIY) platform, has ventured into India. Shopmatic, owned and operated by Shopmatic Solutions Pvt Ltd, said India is its first international market.

The company has opened offices in Gurgaon and Bangalore where a 20-member team is taking on board about 100 pre-listed customers.

The launch is supported by angel investment of $1.5 million from undisclosed investors from India, the US and Singapore, Shopmatic CEO Anurag Avula said. The company's three founders – Avula, Yen Lim and Kris Chen – also participated in this funding round.

"The idea was to simplify the technological processes to help SMEs and individual entrepreneurs easily adapt to online commerce. If you are able to operate Facebook and upload images on this, you should be able to use our platform – it's as simple as that," Avula said.

Through its DIY platform, Shopmatic allows merchants to create a web presence with storefronts. It helps merchants to list products on marketplaces or social media platforms and enables integration with payment gateways.

The company has tie-ups with e-commerce logistics firm Delhivery and global transportation major Aramex for delivery. Shopmatic projects pricing as its USP with subscription beginning at $20 (Rs 1,300) a month, excluding payment gateway fees and logistics.

The company will unveil marketing initiatives in 18 Indian cities over the next two months to meet its ambitious target of acquiring one million customers by the end of next year.

Formed in 2014, the company hopes to be operationally positive within seven to eight months. After India, it plans to enter other markets in Southeast Asia as well as the Middle East and Africa, Avula said.

Canadian-based Shopify is the global leader in the DIY e-commerce segment. It was listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges earlier this year. Shopify ventured into the Indian market in partnership with SingTel in 2013. Bharti Airtel, in which SingTel is a shareholder, entered into a tie-up with Shopify to offer the latter's platform to its small office/home office (SOHO) and SME customers.

Shopmatic would also compete with a host of home-grown platforms such as KartRocket, Zepo, and PowerStores, all of whom have raised funding over the past two years.

Other players that offer similar DIY platforms are ecomnation.in (formerly known as 39shops.com), Infibeam's BuildaBazaar, Twikster, bigcommerce.com and MartJack. Besides, online payment company PayU India had launched PayUPaisa, a web-based product that enables small- and medium-sized sellers to put their stores online in minutes.

Shopmatic' founders are payment industry veterans who worked at PayPal before. In his most recent role, Avula was senior director for merchant sales, strategy and operations at PayPal Asia-Pacific. Lim was PayPal's Asia-Pacific head of enterprise relationship and sales excellence. Chen was PayPal's Asia-Pacific head of small and medium business and channel partners.