Bringing 10 years of selling safety products offline to the online world: SafetyKart
eSparks 2013 was proof enough that the Indian eCommerce space is only undergoing a momentary consolidation. eCommere is surely here to stay. Going deep into a niche and creating engagement along your product lines has worked for many of the upcoming players. On these lines, we recently landed on a venture called Safetykart which deals with the concept of selling safety products which cover personal safety of individuals to industrial safety.
SafetyKart was founded by Vikas Bagaria in Dec 2012 along with his friends Saurav Bagaria and Harshal Aggarwal. Vikas is an Economics graduate who did a MCA and is a seasoned entrepreneur, having founded three companies before. Saurav Bagaria is the Advisor at SafetyKart who worked at Standard Chartered while Harshal is the COO of SafetyKart (who has also co-founded a non profit soccer league organisation)
Before starting SafetyKart, Vikas was in the business of providing safety products for B2B segment since 2002. “We were already into offline B2B business, dealing with a lot of protection & safety products but only catering to Industrial and huge corporate needs,” says Vikas. The Delhi Rape case incident on the 16th of December triggered the idea of making their products easily accessible to the end consumer. And hence, e-commerce. “We have partnered with a lot more manufacturers to source the best safety products for the Indian community. Our product range covers not only women safety, but also child safety, home safety & security, Sports safety, travelling safety and equipment safety,” says Vikas.
Some of the products that caught our attention were:
A door block device which prevents fingers being caught between door and frame. which could be very helpful for people with small kids.
Another is a Rescue Tool Keyring which claims to help you get out of your car in emergency situation by cutting off the seat belt and breaking the glass quickly. Click here to see a how it works.With the numbers of eCommerce stores multiplying by the day and more eCommerce sites coming up in niche sectors, we believe eCommerce as a category has a lot of space to accommodate new players and also for existing players to grow. While the growth part for eCommerce companies seems promising, there is high probablity of being lost in the zillions of portals that are coming up each day.
Standing out has always been a huge challenge for Indian eCommerce startups, especially now when the sector has become crowded. In the last six months since they have launched, SafetyKart gets over 300 unique visits a day and considering a conversion rate of <1%, the company sells close to a 100 products a month.
The company has a good assortment of products but will need to employ innovative ways to push product via different channels. Having an offline presence can help hem augment the online sales, for instance, kiosks at metro stations or bus stops can be a good way of marketing the products.
Visit SafetyKart here and find them on YSPages here.
Related Read: “eCommerce Is Only For Long Term Players,” Wharton Professor, Kartik Hosanagar
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