Offerbean: E-tailing Electronic Goods & Deals in Six Cities
With the Indian e-commerce industry swelling up and moving ahead at a frantic pace, there is a lot of scope for new players to enter the market and play a card or two.
Offerbean.com is a startup in the e-tail business offering electronics goods and deals worth upto 90% off across various cities. The company started operations in 2011 in Jaipur and expanded across Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Agra, Bangalore and Pune.
Founded by Ritesh Khandelwal, the core team also consists of Abhishek Sharma, Sachin Garg and Mitesh Khandelwal. “We always used to think big, from our school days. Ritesh was doing his website development business, and I was working in an E-commerce company,” says Abhishek.
“We then realized how big and challenging the Indian E-commerce market was. In India, one cannot have a single solution for the entire ecosystem, but needs to have specific customer needs in mind. So we started Offerbean.com, which aims to strengthen three facets of Ecommerce (User Interface, Supply Chain Management & Delivery) according to the Indian ecosystem and we are investing time and money in that," he added.
The company believes that good service and a targeted customer base will help keep up with the competition. “In the
next two years, when we will see more consolidation and more maturity in the market; we believe we will become top three players in the market,” says Abhishek with optimism. “We are not aggressive, but calculative in the current scenario. We are working with a slow and sustainable growth. Yes, there is lot of competition but competition is good for us to grow in the right direction," he adds.
The company has already established tie ups with more than 100 suppliers with a growing network. Offerbean.com sells brands like Dell, Samsung, HCL, Apple, Lenovo, HP, Espirit, Fastrack and Funskool among others on their online shop. “Our rich experience, customer centric approach, dual flexibility and fastest delivery track record make us stand apart and gives us an edge over others to deal successfully with real time challenges of online shopping,” informs Abhishek.
The core team at Offerbean besides Abhishek and Ritesh Khandelwal, comprises Mitesh Khandelwal, also an IIT Delhi graduate and Sachin Garg, an IIM Kozhikode graduate. Offerbean currently operates from 12 major cities. Like any other startup, the focus is given to areas including Customer support, Business development and Logistics.
Apart from adding tier 2 cities to their target list, the company focuses on increasing catalogue size and exploring new categories for online businesses. The company also believes that in order to sustain long term in the market, developing their own logistics and delivery system is a must. There are plans too, of sharing these services with other players through the ‘Resource Sharing Program’ & ‘Vendor Education Program’. Abhishek believes that the core strength of the company is dedicated customer service and implementing corporate culture in the organizations.
Logistics appears to be a potential stumbling block for the Indian e-commerce industry. “The Indian logistics & delivery system is not yet mature and that is the biggest hurdle for both small and big players in the e commerce space,” agrees Abhishek “We believe that to sustain long term in the market, we have to develop our own logistics & delivery system.”
Offerbean is looking at m-commerce as a definite move for the future. “We surely are interested in the future of m-commerce and mobile phone payment options. We will soon be launching our android and iPhone apps with cell phone payment option. We are also planning an optimized website & UI for low end mobile phone users. A lot of customization and merchandising can be done in a mobile shopping platform according to customer interests,” says Abhishek, signing off.
Do take a peek at their site here.
