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Jochelle Mendonca, The Economic Times\n<\/i><\/p>\n
Jochelle Mendonca, The Economic Times
\n<\/i><\/p>\n
Mumbai, 31 May 2016<\/i><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"..\/images\/tata-cliq.jpg\")
What\ndoes it take to build an ecommerce platform? Well, just on the money\nside, Tata Unistore, the Tata group’s online sales arm, paid TCS Rs\n36.48 crore in the runup to the launch of the website. <\/p>
There’s another Rs 20.9 crore of work done in FY16 that is yet to be paid out, TCS’ annual report showed. <\/p>
The TataCliQ ecommerce site that launched last week had TCS as its primary technology partner . <\/p>
Data analytics for the site will be provided by Tata IQ, the company said in its presentation.
The\nGroup says it is a creating a ‘one-of-its-kind, omnichannel’\nmarketplace which would allow customers to ship-to-stores,\ncollect-from-stores and return-to-stores.
Experts\nsaid the process requires a great deal of technology to connect stores\nto an online site, because different merchandise inventory systems\nwould need to be connected. The company had to connect its front-end\nonline ordering system, the store points-of-sale and mobile\napplications to back-systems like its warehouse, inventory management\nsystem, customer service and analytics.
“Technology plays a\ngreat part, because if you don’t have the technology, the different\nsystems can’t talk to each other and the customer won’t get a seamless\nexperience, which is the basis of omni-channel,” Devangshu Dutta, CEO\nof retail consultancy firm Third Eyesight, told ET.
<\/span>Tata\nCliQ is based on a customised ecommerce platform from SAP called\nHybris. The company has an in-house team and 20 technology partners,\nincluding some startups such as Chennai-based artificial intelligence\nstartup Mad Street Den. The startup, which has been funded by Reservoir\nInvestments’ Exfinity Fund and GrowX Ventures, provides visual search\nand visual recommendation solutions to Tata CliQ. “In fashion, if\nsomeone is looking at a little black dress, typically it makes sense to\nshow them more offerings of that kind. And then you could have further\npersonalisation, because with artificial intelligence that is\npossible,” Ashwini Asokan, co-founder and CEO at Mad Street Den, said.
Asokan,\nwho declined to give specifics on the partnership with the Tatas, also\nworks with ecommerce startups such as Voonik and Craftvilla. She added\nthat the pace of technology adoption in the ecommerce market in India\nwas much faster than Western markets.
“The cycle here is\ntwo-to-four weeks. Elsewhere you still have to go through a pilot. It\nwill really be interesting to see how this plays out with the Tatas vs\nReliance vs the Birlas. In 12-18 months, I think the ecommerce market\nin India will look completely different,” Asokan said. <\/span><\/p>\n