Unicommerce’s decade-long journey to 600M orders, $7B annual GMV
The Turning Point is a series of short articles that focuses on the moment when an entrepreneur hit upon their winning idea. This week, we look at ecommerce and retail enablement platform Unicommerce.
During the recent festive season sale, , an integrated SaaS platform for post-purchase experience management, processed more than 14 million orders in a week and reported 50% year-on-year growth in festive order volumes.
Founded a decade ago, Unicommerce has worked with more than 15,000 brands and currently processes over 600 million orders, amounting to $7 billion gross merchandise value (GMV) annually.
It claims to be India’s largest ecommerce supply chain SaaS solution platform, processing 20% of India’s dropship ecommerce volumes.
Over the past two years, the Gurgaon-based startup has focused on expanding its presence across geographies, starting with Dubai. It now serves over 15 countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the MENA region, with products being shipped to more than 78 countries.
Unicommerce works with roll-up firms and D2C brands including , , , , , , , and others.
Slow and steady
The sharp rise in ecommerce across India led to the conceptualisation of Unicommerce. As e-tail gained momentum, the task of managing online sales manually or with traditional software became increasingly unwieldy and impractical as they were not designed to manage the specific requirements of ecommerce operations.
“The rapid adoption of ecommerce by big/small businesses and buyers led to a clear and growing demand for specialised technology solutions to manage this - this led to the birth of Unicommerce in 2012,” says Kapil Makhija, CEO of Unicommerce.
Unicommerce’s first solution was an indigenous order management platform that empowered online businesses to manage orders from multiple marketplaces through a single platform. The platform acted as middleware where sellers could process all their orders from a centralised platform, which provided them complete visibility of their inventory and online orders.
Over the years, in tandem with industry requirements, Unicommerce has evolved to become a full-stack tech platform that enables brands to offer an enhanced post-purchase experience to end consumers.
Every part of an ecommerce operation – from when a company receives an order and till the order is delivered to a consumer - can be managed through the platform.
The startup has a team of over 350 “Unicommrades” (the tech team accounts for almost 30%) and has offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Kolkata. It will soon open an office in Singapore.
First phase of festive ecommerce sales witnesses 5.4X growth in daily sales
A shift in focus
Between 2012 and 2017, the ecommerce and retail enablement platform focused largely on small and medium businesses. By 2017, the startup realised the potential of turning towards large enterprises.
“The journey from a startup with a focus on SMEs to becoming one of India’s largest ecommerce-focused supply chain SaaS and post-purchase experience management platform has been rather extraordinary,” Kapil says.
Today, large enterprises contribute 80% of the company’s overall revenue.
“The strong growth in enterprise business was possible as we evolved our business processes to meet the needs of the big companies,” the founder says.
Unicommerce has again shifted focus and set its sights on the larger goal – the international market - and adopted market-specific models to serve users' requirements. It is now building local teams in India and internationally.
The road ahead
In the last two years, Unicommerce claims that it has seen over 200% growth in its client business across the international region. Going forward, the startup aims to increase its international business by over 500%.
The startup also wants to forge a deeper presence in emerging categories like sports and fitness equipment, home decor, and nutraceuticals due to “ immense growth potential in these sectors”.
“In the last couple of years, we have seen rising adoption of Unicommerce’s platform amongst e-tailers from Tier II and Tier III cities of India, and this trend is expected to continue in the coming years,” Kapil says.
“We recorded 100% growth in new business acquisitions in the last financial year and we are on the trajectory of 100% growth in new business for the current year as well,” Kapil tells YourStory.
Edited by Teja Lele