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Richa Maheshwari, The Economic\nTimes\n<\/i><\/p>\n
Richa Maheshwari, The Economic\nTimes
\n<\/i><\/p>\n
Bengaluru, 10 February 2016<\/i><\/p>\n
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Snapdeal\nhas integrated Redbus, Zomato and Cleartrip inventory in its mobile\napplication as a pilot that will help customers book bus tickets,\nflight tickets, hotel tickets and food directly from the application.
This\nassociation gives Cleartrip, Zomato and RedBus access to Snapdeal’s\nuser base. In return, Snapdeal will earn a commission for each booking\nmade through its platform. Air ticket is a large gross merchandise\nvalue (GMV) category, while food ordering is a high frequency category.\n
“Horizontals are looking at monetising their user base with a\nfocus on GMV and repeat use cases. As funding environment becomes\ntougher, growth in these metrics will stand out,” said a Snapdeal\ninvestor requesting anonymity. When contacted, Snapdeal declined\ncomment.
Last year, CEO Kunal Bahl had told ET that the\ncompany will surpass Flipkart in terms of GMV by March, 2016. “Whatever\ntheir (Flipkart’s) numbers are, we will be ahead of them by March\n(2016),” he had said.
Recently, the company tied up with real\nestate developers such as TVS Emerald, Provident Housing and Runwal\nGroup to launch real estate and financial services on its website,\nwhich boosts the company’s GMV. The commission received on such\ntransactions is not clear. GMV is the overall sales by merchants on an\necommerce platform, without factoring discounts, out of which an\netailer gets 5-20% as margin on an average. Cleartrip, Zomato and\nRedbus refused comment on queries sent by ET.
According\nto experts, ecommerce players are now experimenting ways to monetise\ntraffic through non-inventory based models. “These are service oriented\nofferings, which won’t take up any extra cost in terms of physical\nspace and, hence, these players will make better margin out of it,”\nsaid Devangshu Dutta, CEO at retail consultancy firm Third Eyesight. <\/span>
Snapdeal\nrival, Paytm, is also building a travel marketplace on its platform.\nThe Alibaba-backed company had started selling hotel and bus tickets on\nthe platform a few months back. “To provide everything on their\nplatform, ecommerce players are now encroaching ideas,” said an\ninvestor.
“Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon are going the Paytm\nway of launching wallets and two years back, Paytm, a payments company,\nstarted tapping the ecommerce space.”<\/p>