Our experience at Etailing India Expo, Mumbai

Klevu search was part of this year’s Etailing India Expo held in Mumbai from 24th to 26th February. This was one of the largest ecommerce events held in India with attendees ranging from investors, online stores, digital agencies, system integrators, payment solution providers, innovative technology companies and the media. No doubt, for someone who wants to start an online business in India, this was the place to be.

Well planned agenda

With 1500+ attendees and 50+ exhibitors, etailing India witnessed enthusiastic participants from all across the globe. The three day extravaganza was a well thought out mix of talks from industry stalwarts, insightful panel discussions, workshops, networking opportunities and the etailing award ceremony. All of the hot topics of online retailing were covered including, payments, marketplaces, technology, big data, logistics and funding. An interesting opening session by Mahesh Murthy (seed fund investments) set the ball rolling. He primarily talked about investments and tips on how to select the right investor for your venture.

Klevu Search at Etailing

We met lot of people from startups to big brands, and from digital agencies to development companies. It was evident that everybody is trying hard to find creative ways to get consumer mindshare and a share of their wallet. One of the biggest concerns is clearly on-site conversion. Site search is one such pain point where everyone is struggling to convert a visitor into shopper. Small stores with limited budget find it difficult to address poor site search, whereas large retailers find themselves spending loads of money to get rid of ‘0 results’ and ‘irrelevant results’. For example, when we talked to Valtech, one of the biggest European digital marketing agencies, they informed us that big brands tend to integrate complex and resource heavy solr technology to improve the site search experience. Yet this rarely provides the results they desire. Moreover every business has unique requirements for site search, so some level of customization is always required. Case in point, In speaking with Ritesh Katariya (COO, cbazaar.com) he shared, That in jewelry business people tend to look for very specific products based on their geography, which makes site search customization very cumbersome for online retailers.

For online retailers looking for practical ways to increase conversion that also caters to their unique business, Klevu search, with its simple and flexible solution, was definitely appreciated by everyone. Klevu is a solr++ search served from the cloud that can be customized for any business. Attendees responded very favorably to the natural language understanding of Klevu that ensures 100% accuracy in the search box results. Klevu’s self-learning technology optimizes results in real time as per the shopping trends for individual webstores. Klevu works on one basic principle, “If they search, they must shop”, which retailers looking for increased conversion rates truly appreciate.

All in all we made lot of friends, saw some really cool technologies and truly had a great time at Etailing India Expo.

Key takeaways

Etailing provided a platform for all the ecommerce ecosystem stakeholders to come together and share a common growth vision.  Every session added a new perspective towards doing online business. One such workshop was by Facebook. Saurav Chakraborty (Client Partner, Facebook) spoke about how innovative targeting techniques to capture your audience have evolved over the time. He also mentioned that, 67% of shoppers discover the product on platform other than your own website. To summarize, here are the key takeaways from the event:

• Ecommerce in India is bound to grow at 40-50% over the period of next 5 years
• This year as well $5 Billion worth investments are expected to be pumped into ecommerce sector
• Investors would prefer putting money into solutions and technologies that are niche and address’s pain points of business/consumer rather than into ‘me too’ companies
• Clearly, with numerous sellers out there convenience is the name of the game. You ought to retain the customer once he is on your site

What’s next?

We are next headed to participate in Imagine Commerce 2015, April 20-22, Las Vegas. Biggest Magento event organized by Ebay enterprise and Magento. We look forward to meeting our partners and clients in North America and have a really good time. Let us know if you plan to be around, we would be happy to meet you.