End-to-end e-commerce management firm Kreate Konnect helps sellers grow their business
Vadodara-based Kreate Konnect leverages technology to help sellers manage inventory, orders and marketplace campaigns via a single dashboard, and claims to process an average of 250 orders per day.
In June 2015, Abhishek Jain and Piyush Jaidev, two friends who had worked in the world of online sales, put together their learnings. They knew the challenges involved in selling online – product listings, inventory management, CRM, marketplace policies and keyword management.
Armed with these insights, the duo decided to start Kreate Connect, an end-to-end e-commerce management company in Vadodara.
The team worked as a services-only company initially, charging fixed monthly fees from clients. But Abhishek and Piyush soon realised that there was a need to focus on a viable tech-based solution to ensure that the model was scalable.
Ringing in organisational change
In the initial days, Piyush says Kreate Konnect would provide services like assistance in inventory management, order processing and running marketing campaigns on various e-commerce marketplaces for the clients.
“We have always believed that sellers are the backbone of online marketplaces and there was a need to help the seller with all aspects of the e-commerce business,” says Abhishek.
Their idea was to use technology to help sellers make sense of the big e-commerce and online demon.
The first organisational change the company made was to open its first outstation office in Vadodara in September 2015. Alongside, Kreate Konnect closed down one of its two offices in New Delhi. This change helped cut down infrastructure costs by almost 40 percent.
The second organisational change the company made was to merge its international e-tailing business VintFlea with Kreate Konnect. Prior to that VintFlea was an in-house brand, selling everything from handicrafts to apparel to accessories across more than 50 countries around the world.
Today, VintFlea is the international selling arm of Kreate Konnect and sells through the co-branding route from India on the Amazon global selling programme.
The technological advantage
The duo started work on their tech product in August last year with a vision to offer one of the most comprehensive cloud-based solutions to clients. Their product now covers the entire spectrum of an e-commerce business with a heavy emphasis on predictive analytics.
“The first phase of the product was launched in February this year; the complete development has been divided into three phases. We are targeting the complete rollout of the technology platform by the end of this year,” Abhishek says.
The company has successfully migrated to a technology company by developing its in-house cloud-based product that helps clients manage their entire online business from a single dashboard.
What Kreate Konnect essentially does now is sync, direct, manage and automate all processes of an e-commerce establishment. In March this year, Kreate Konnect raised its angel round of funding from Langoor, a Bengaluru-based digital marketing company. The funds are being used to develop technology and expand the sales and marketing team. The team intends to raise their next round of funding early next year.
On why they chose to invest in Kreate Konnect, Venu Ganganna, CEO of Langoor, says they currently see plenty of collaboration and growth opportunities with both companies.
“We believe that Kreate Konnect has a relevant alignment with Langoor,” he says. The funding details are undisclosed.
To reduce the burden of fixed costs the company has now moved to a variable fees model, charging clients anywhere between 5 to 15 percent on each sale.
Growing the team and clientele
One of the biggest challenges the team faced was to set up the tech team and ensure speedy development and design of the product.
“With the number of clients increasing every month, managing them through third-party software was getting very difficult. Also since marketplaces kept changing policies such as seller commissions and logistics charges, incorporating them into the product was an extremely difficult task,” Abhishek says.
What helped was hiring the right set of people. Today, Kreate Konnect has grown to a team of 30 people - brand managers, operations executives, and sales and tech staff. The team claims to have over 40 clients who sell their products across the globe.
“We process an average of 250 orders per day through all our sellers,” Abhishek says.
The team claims their monthly gross merchandise value (GMV) has increased approximately 30 percent month-on-month from Rs 8 lakh in December 2015 to Rs 2 crore as of now.
The future is bright
E-commerce continues to grow at significant pace in India.
According to a report by the Indian retailer, there are over 50 million users for e-commerce, and sellers are fighting for their share of the online market. It’s no surprise that there is a growing demand for e-commerce solutions players.
Kreate Konnect is one player, and their close competitor is KartRocket. The Delhi-based SaaS platform has created an ecosystem of partners to offer value-added services for e-tailers in India. KartRocket is an end-to-end e-commerce enablement platform that allows entrepreneurs to create their e-commerce store, mobile apps, accept online and COD payments, ship their orders across India, and also get sales from marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Snapdeal.
Venu believes e-commerce advisory right now is “like an early version of Google Adwords”. He adds,
“The opportunity is immense, but not many people are leveraging what is possible to its complete potential. We believe, much like digital marketing, e-commerce/channel marketing and optimisation will start taking over substantial chunks of budgets of large brands. And Kreate Konnect has an early advantage in that space.”
