Are you a small team running a growing business? Are you crazy about numbers and believe that visuals are the best way to understand/present them? Google Code’s Chart API is a neat utility to quickly build good looking charts that can help you monitor your business. To quote the prerequisites as mentioned on the page:

To use this API, you should have a little HTML experience; a little patience to read the documentation; and a little persistence to keep trying if your first charts don’t look as you expect them to.

At Chaupaati, we use Google Chart Tools and we love it. If you are looking for a simple, quick and effective charting solution, why don’t you give it a spin.

An edited version of this blog-post appeared in Business Standard.

E-commerce in India has grown steadily in the last decade. But the year 2010 marked a turning point for the industry when companies across the size spectrum found firm ground. There was a healthy addition of startups in the e-commerce space – group buying sites and deal destinations created a special segment. The VCs returned to the party with multi-million dollar investments – Tiger Global invested in Flipkart, Battery Ventures and Greylock Partners committed funds to Taggle, Canaan pumped funds in Naaptol, Sequoia backed Fashion and You, and there were more. Existing e-commerce players consolidated their positions with acquisitions and expansion plans. And a veteran company made big-bang debut on the bourses – Makemytrip saw a 90% increase in its valuation when it was listed on NASDAQ at $900 million.

Dear Customers:

Over the last two years, Chaupaati Bazaar - phone pe deal - has built a fast growing phone commerce marketplace selling mobiles, electronics, books, magazines, toys, gifts and other products & services directly to customers across India in partnership with dozens of brands and retailers. Till date, our platform has supported hundreds of thousands of phone calls and tens of thousands of orders with happy customers across 150+ Indian cities.

I am delighted to share with you that Chaupaati Bazaar will now become part of Future Group’s digital commerce business. This gives us all a much larger canvas to achieve our common goal of providing convenience & access to consumers across India in shopping for genuine products & services at great prices and top service levels, without going to a physical shop. Mr. Rajiv Prakash, CEO of Future Ecommerce, would like to welcome all business partners of Chaupaati Bazaar to the Future Group platform with a commitment to continue partnering with them and growing the business together. In the words of Mr. Kishore Biyani, “Future Group is committed to making significant  investments in building the digital commerce business. Having a strong phone commerce channel is integral to this vision. Chaupaati Bazaar is a phone commerce pioneer and we are proud to join hands with them in our journey.”

While we continue to support and grow your business with Chaupaati Bazaar & phone pe deal, the marriage with Future Group brings tremendous opportunity to our relationship with you:

1. Future Group has built a wildly successful marketplace in the real world by way of Central, a seamless mall format that supports 300 brand partners. Chaupaati Bazaar would now enable the group to build a virtual marketplace model for tens of thousands of brand and retail partners
2. Future Group receives 190MM+ footfalls across India through retail stores like Big Bazaar, Pantaloons, Ezone, Home Town and several others with total sales of ~Rs.10,000Cr in FY’10. These consumers now have an alternate method to shop from the retail brands they know and trust.
3. FutureBazaar.com is a leading e-commerce business of India and attracts millions of visitors to shop online. Recently, this business has further extended its reach using phone commerce.
4. Future Group is making more investments in scaling the phone commerce business reaching out through print, television, retail, SMS, user communities, and other media.
5. Future Group has a strong logistics and fulfillment network across India with industry-unique service levels that we can leverage

Pareto distribution or the 80-20 rule states that 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. The theory came about when Vilfredo Pareto noted that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. Popular observation in retailing is that 80% of sales come from 20% of the products or 20% of the customers. In the last decade, e-commerce businesses realized significant profits out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The total sales of a large number of items & customers in the remaining 20% came to be known as The Long Tail. ”This has gained popularity in recent times as a retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities.” Chris Andersen popularized this concept through a Wired magazine article and then his book. The 80% opportunity is the Heads business & the 20% opportunity is Tails.

In India since 2005, phone commerce is disrupting brick-and-mortar commerce in similar ways as e-commerce did in the US since 1995. While all attempts at phone commerce at scale have been driven by getting a piece of the high-volume-low-margin 80% (Home Shop, Indiatimes Readers’ Offers, Naaptol, etc.), what has worked for them are actually the 20% products that are exclusively available by phone or the 20% markets where customers do not have convenient access to the product category. In other words, market access is the primary driver for the phone commerce business at this time rather than cost or convenience. Discounts and offers can drive trials and turnover, but market access is essential to drive repeats, word-of-mouth, brand, profits and therefore true value creation. The more the industry understands this essence, the more we are likely to succeed in the coming years.

In the process of helping brands and retailers create an alternate direct-to-consumer sales channel using the phone (via phone pe deal), we are exposed us to a diverse set of product categories, geographical markets and customer segments that help us learn the market. Brands and retailers that seem to be addressing the Heads business at the outset are only successful doing phone commerce as a Tails business. Those who understand the power of the Tails business are able to quickly scale it to monthly sales of 1Cr+, while those who are trying to force the Heads business are banging their heads against the wall while bleeding through the nose.

Admittedly, it is getting hard to not scratch the itch to build our own consumer brand, to practice what we preach, to snatch the whole pie of a large market. However, it requires us to focus on a specific consumer, specific need, specific product and all of that good stuff. As the wise man said: “focus is not about what you decide to do, it is about what you decide to not do”. We have been exploring a few options on the table to build a compelling brand, and with each attractive choice we want to make, there is a lesser attractive but attractive enough choice we do not want to let go. Something says, there is a way to create an institution that can do it all. Phone commerce at the core and many owned brands addressing many Tails.

Dear friends and associates:

In the recent past, consumer businesses worldwide have discovered the phenomenon of group buying. One deeply discounted deal on a product or service is made available to local consumers; if enough people buy within a set deadline, everyone gets the deal, else the deal is off. Just like one-click shopping and the social web, we believe that group buying is a great feature that many digital commerce businesses should incorporate in their platforms over the next few years. Chaupaati has taken a step in that direction by partnering with Brown Paper Bag to launch ThePotluck.in starting with Mumbai. To start, we will announce one cool deal in the lifestyle category every weekend targeted towards the hip & trendy Mumbai socialites. The launch deal on Friday, May 21 was FREE couple entry at Prive Colaba, one of the hardest clubs to get into in Mumbai. The deal closed at midnight on Sunday, May 23 with 43 coupons sold!

We would love to get your thoughts, opinions and feedback about this business; and products or services that can be offered at 50-80% off in return for an advance payment towards a minimum commitment. The current reach of ThePotluck.in is tens of thousands of elite professionals and business families in Mumbai, and growing virally every day. The idea is to catch the attention and grab the loyalty of these consumers with imaginative deals rather than use discounting to reach a different consumer set. If you would like to partner with us, get featured, advice us or participate in any other way, we would immensely value your patronage.

Enjoy ThePotluck.in - The weekend’s here, big deal!

Chaupaati team

So what was that thing about the gazelle waking up in Africa and the lion waking up and the gazelle running and the lion running faster? And the moral went something like - It doesn’t matter if you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better be running.

In any case, this June Chaupaati will complete two years of our product going live. Like any startup, we made several iterations, added features, deleted features, adapted new technologies, changed business model, went through our lows, went through our highs, and everything else that would keep us alive. In essence, when the sun came up, we were running. (Note to self: Ask Kashyap to post a comprehensive note on our two year journey trying to crack the phone commerce scene.)

The reason I came out of my hibernation to post on this blog is this: the Chaupaati team is pretty excited with our new service offering - phone pe deal. (Well, it isn’t exactly new. But it really is newly packaged. Also, it should answer all questions on “how we do what we do” at one place). So …

phone pe deal is a service offering for exclusive brands who wish to create a direct sales channel across India over the phone and web. While brand reach through media and word-of-mouth is widespread, market reach is limited because of limitations of brick-and-mortar retail and distribution channels. phone pe deal is a way to fill that gap and acquire new customers in a risk-free and profitable way. Leading brands offering children’s products, magazine subscriptions and appliances are using phone pe deal to provide customers across India with a more convenient and accessible way to purchase their products from the comfort of their home.

Please visit the website and let us know what you think. Also check out case-studies on how brands like Amar Chitra Katha and Infomedia 18 are using phone pe deal. As always, we value your feedback a lot and are happy to hear from our users.

Hello people! We are happy to announce that all Infomedia 18 magazines now have a simple phone subscription mode. Now you can subscribe to all your favorite magazines like Better Photography, Entrepreneur, Overdrive etc. by simply calling 098-3333-1947 and completing your order on phone. The hotline number is also advertised on the eshop of Infomedia’s website and is powered by Chaupaati’s phone pe deal service.

Infomedia 18 magazines reach over a million readers per month through 40,000+ news-stands and outlets across 400+ cities. All issues carry the hotline number that helps their readers to subscribe on phone. Infomedia is India’s first magazine house to adopt and promote a simple phone based subscription system. So spread the word and subscribe through phone. And stay tuned for more such awesome announcements! Here are some of the many ads that flash our number …

So it’s been about 9 days since I joined here at Chaupaati and yes its fun. Boy, am I blown away by the amount of work we accomplish on a daily basis. Although my checklist is just a few lines, some checklists that I have seen here require entire white boards. Basically we are a phone commerce company that caters to both online and offline mode of commerce. So what have I learnt in these past few days? Let me jot it down.

First I learnt the value of customer feedback. In a business like ours where we do this 24*7*365, customer feedback is one of the foundation stones. If the customer is not happy your business can’t be doing the best it can. As a part of an exercise I called up some of our Amar Chitra Katha customers. And I was surprised to hear the feedback. Here’s an example:

Yashad (Y): Hello am I speaking to Mr. X?

X: Yes, who is this?

Y: Hello Sir, this is Yashad calling from Chaupaati Bazaar, do you have a few minutes?

X: Yes, go on.

Y: Sir, you ordered a few products from our website from ACK; I just wanted to know your user feedback.

X: I could navigate through your website easily; I found what I wanted and would like to tell you that your call centre guys are very good. They are very resourceful. They gave me every bit of information that I wanted.

Y: Anything else, sir?

X: No, I will keep shopping from Chaupaati. I like it.

Y: Thank you sir, have a nice day!

An interesting case was when I called up a lady and she said that she and her son both love ACK products. They own many of the titles that we have uploaded on our site, and so they visited our site to see if they could find the titles that they didn’t have. Interestingly the lady told me that she isn’t technologically savvy so she had her son sit on the computer and tell her what books he wanted to order! “It’s very nice that you have ACK in your catalogue, I liked shopping with you, will definitely tell all my friends that I have found a good place to buy ACK from.”

A third and perhaps most interesting of all the cases was from one of our abroad customers in Dubai.

“Wow

I got my order already today…..So quick and so efficient….SO EXCITED…..going to start reading them ASAP.

Thank you”

That’s the mail he sent, after our delivery reached him in 3 days instead of 15.

Phone commerce isn’t a simple to pull off. That’s the second of my learnings here. Imagine that you are ordering for a product via the phone and want it delivered to your doorstep. So we have to do everything from answering your call to getting you the delivery in good condition within the specified time. Try to mentally map the steps you may take while you do this. Once you have that in place multiply that several times and now you know the intricacies of the business. Well, try sending your next door neighbor a package via post. Once you have visited a DTDC or a Vichare you will know how tough it can get.

Putting together the machinery that does this seems to me like a hard nut to crack. Imagine that you have to get a catalogue from every brand, host a website, get permissions, upload your catalogue online, acquire a phone line, and set up a call centre to handle calls and you are done with only step one. Order processing and fulfillment are the other side of this coin. But the job has only begun here. You constantly have to get customer feedback and better yourself. Have I mentioned Sales yet? Okay, sales is the third part of this process, since we constantly get real time data from our call centre, we have to put it into an understandable medium so we can comprehend it and generate more sales.

Here we as designers, catalogue managers and sales executives have to think of each new idea in two ways. One from our point of view and secondly how the end user will think about it. This effectively doubles up our work load. We learnt about web designing in XIC but I never knew that what we do here in about a 100 times tougher than that. It’s not always about hyperlinking photos to static pages. We conveniently take that for granted as well. So in conclusion:

• Phone commerce is a very demanding business

• It is heavily based on customer feedback

• Getting your operations right is only part of the process.

So do visit our website www.chaupaati.in and give us your feedback.

Have I mentioned that I like what I do here? Well, for the record, I do. More on that later. Its time to get cracking!

Well, it’s good to say that I am finally employed now. Feels very nice, and even though I joined Chaupaati Bazaar only yesterday, the atmosphere here is very enriching. From day one itself I am already in the loop of all things. Being given updates on everything really makes me wonder how tightly knit start ups are. The calls have been flooding in and my new Chaupaati Id is beginning to complain about the HUGE stack of mails that have been flowing in from the second it was created. On one hand, seeing that almost bursting mailbox gives me hope that there is a bright future for me in digital advertising industry, but on the other hand it scares me seeing the volume of work that will eventually come to me.

As a part of our Digital Advertising module at XIC, we had done a campaign on Google Ad Words, but it was only yesterday that I realized that our seemingly pointless campaign helped Chaupaati convert our click through to actual sales figures. From yesterday I have begun to look at each and every suggestion that I make to the team very very carefully. Because now I know that every suggestion has the potential to be a successful idea and every idea can be converted into money. In addition to learning a new bunch of things that I did not know before, I have also been made aware of the fact that from this point onwards I am collectively responsible for running a part of Chaupaati. That is a good feeling. Plus Saturday and Sunday are my weekly offs!

It is good to work here, I have been able to make the most of it till now and I am given an opportunity to better myself every day. I guess I attribute my comfort at work to the entire team. Especially to Kashyap, Zishaan and Amit, all of whom made me feel welcome.

It was an awesome first day and I look forward to many more such days at Chaupaati!

I recently met Sundeep Malhotra, CEO of Home Shop 18 at an online retailers’ conference in New Delhi. Brilliant speaker and had the audience under a spell throughout his talk. Home Shop 18 has scaled from Rs.35Cr gross sales in year 1 to Rs.200Cr in year 2 and Rs.360Cr in year 3. This puts them at an average of Rs.1Cr of sales per day. Home Shop 18 created the first 24 hour shopping channel in India. In their first year, they tried to replicate the formula that worked in the American living rooms, viz. selling sauna belts, astrological gems and other whacky products that appeal to miserable couch-potatoes and gossiping housewives. Of course, there was the Indian touch of offering ek-mukhi rudraksh malas and yoga paraphernalia, but a good part of the programming consisted of white women speaking studio-translated Hindi matching note by note on the superlatives.

This weekend, I took the time to watch Home Shop 18 for an entire hour on a Saturday evening and took a sneak peak at their 6 hours of original studio programming per day. The first 30-minute segment was fake gold and stone jewelery appealing to the sensibilities of housewives organizing kitty parties positioned as Satyanarayan pooja. The next 30-minute segment was a fake iPhone appealing to the sensibilities of the small town businessmen who travel extensively, use 4 SIM cards at a time and care about the status projected by a multi-touch phone with a fluorescent fish as the background. In both cases, it was not too hard to believe that they fulfill 6,000 transactions a day across 1,000+ towns of India. Mobile phones and jewelery also seem to be a departure from the purely niche and otherwise inaccessible categories.

Similar to the US, television reaches majority Indian households and the mobile phone reaches majority spending consumers. However, the Internet reaches less than 20% of spending consumers in India, compared to over 80% in the US. At the same time, consumer spending in India has increased widely and the penetration of retail malls and distribution network is lagging behind the aspiration to spend in smaller towns. Television creates a desire to buy certain products, yet the distribution network makes those products inaccessible. Along comes Home Shop 18 and fills this gap. Although a moving target, it is a large market considering the consumer base of 350MM+ representing 110M+ households. The phone is obviously an integral part of the eco-system since it gives consumers a way to connect with the business and makes the transaction possible, while the distribution network is integral because it completes the loop where brands and retailers have failed.

Home Shop 18 has now learned that they have unlocked a market for products that fall in the delta of media reach minus distribution reach, and even genuine brands are eligible within their model, if not more so. They are aggressively extending their catalog to include originals instead of fakes. Of course, the challenge is to reach targeted consumers for high value products, instead of mass consumers for high volume products. It is unlikely that a buyer of genuine products would watch the same channel, since she has been cognitively trained to switch the channel as fast as a mother stumbling upon a porn channel in the presence of children. However, it is possible to reach targeted consumers via the large network of private channels that are looking for a revenue stream beyond pay-per-second advertising. There is no dearth of genuine brands looking for reach through the barrage of private channels, if only their ROI risk was better managed. If Home Shop 18 can successfully bridge these two made-for-each-other needs in search for a business model, rest is clockwork and a short runway to the bank.

While entrepreneurs in small towns have figured out Home Shop 18 as a an alternative distribution channel that gives them opportunity to mark up and locally sell products to those who do not watch television, it re-iterates the value Home Shop 18 is creating as a distribution channel.

India spends Rs.10,000Cr a year on television, another Rs.10,000Cr a year is spent on print, and Rs.5,000Cr a year on other media (outdoor, BTL, online, mobile, etc.). The phone is penetrated across all consumers of this media and all consumers who are spending. Are there more “new retail” companies in the making who can address the same delta of media reach minus distribution reach? I would like to believe so.