Analysis of an E - Commerce portal

1. E – Commerce
Website analysis of
Efforts by:
Deepali Pandit
Shivam Kharwal
BFT - V

2. Abstract
In this study, I present a theoretical model, which grows together the elements of shopping
online with the increased internet usage and main emphasis was laid on limeroad.com.
The data have been gathered from various sources mainly from the company’s official
website and a qualitative analysis has been carried out.
The core category of the model is “Love. Create. Share. Shop”. The analysis and the
model answer the question of principles and practices should be considered in to make
your e-commerce portal successful.
It is based on the philosophies that are linked to the categories: material sourcing,
Customer satisfaction, Revenue model, Competitors, saving resources and etc.

3. Executive Summary
Online shopping is the process consumers go through to purchase products or services
over the Internet.
An online shop, or virtual store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services
at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall.
Online shopping has spread into every corner of life, linking people to the culture
of capitalism in frequent and daily ways.
In general, shopping has always catered to middleclass and upper class women.
Shopping is fragmented and pyramid-shaped.
E-commerce enables consumers to save money and to choose among an increased
range of products, especially when products are not available locally or nationally.
However, due to online payment consumers take advantage of the increased choice and
cheaper prices that e-commerce can deliver.
This research is conducted to study the working of Limeroad.com which is a social E-
commerce portal. This report includes the various factors which are taken into
consideration by the consumers for purchasing through online shopping.
This research also takes into consideration the factors which forms the basis
of comparison made by the customers for online shopping vis-à-vis shopping through a
retail store. The main focus of this study revolves around women as a buyer.

4. About Limeroad
Limeroad is an ecommerce portal with a difference. Here, you can discover that perfect
top, share it with your Facebook friends, get a second opinion and buy it only if it gets a
nod from all your friends. Exactly the way we women prefer to shop. Founded in 2012 by
Suchi Mukherjee. . LimeRoad.com is a brand owned by A.M. Marketplaces Pvt. Ltd.
The platform hosts three unparalleled ecosystems: vendors, scrapbookers and
consumers who are reinforcing each other.
About CEO
 Ms. Mukherjee was selected as one of 15 women worldwide, “Global Leaders under
40”, and showcased at the World Women's Forum in Paris in 2010 for her
contributions in scaling businesses which impact people’s lives deeply using
technology.
 She was on the executive management team at Skype where her teams designed
and launched the biggest product upgrade in Skype’s history post-launch.
 Ms Mukherjee built Gumtree, an eBay Inc. subsidiary, into a leader in the jobs and
consumer-to-consumer cars classifieds in the highly competitive UK market.
User Interface
The home page greets you with this tempting magazine spread you see in the screenshot.
This is the first page of the Limeroad scrapbook collections – ‘Affordable Intelligent living’.
A click on the rupee symbols displayed on the items shows the brand and price for that
item along with a link to view more details. The item pinned as ‘hot picks’ is the most
recommended one by Limeroad.

5. The pink icons serve to flaunt your style and share. Click the heart shaped icon to show
you love this collection. Click the book with clip icon to create your own scrapbook. Click
the people icon to share it with your Facebook friends.
You can flip through this page to see the next collection ‘Summertime Blues’ just as you
would flip through a fashion magazine. In addition, those green flaps on the edge of the
magazine allow you to shop by cities or brands or your own scrapbook. Creating a
scrapbook is easy – every item you browse through has a scrapbook icon. Just click the
icon and you have an open scrapbook beside. Drag everything you like and describe your
collection under ‘Lets Party’, ‘Work wear Wardrobe’, ‘Flirty me’, ‘Bollywood Dazzle’, etc.
You can then share this scrapbook with your Facebook friends or add it to your shopping
cart. Currently, the shopping cart option on the scrapbook isn’t enabled. But you need to
sign in with your Facebook account to be able to share. There is also a sign up form for
a new account. You need to be logged in if you plan to go shopping on this road. And if
someone buys your style, you will get LR point in your account.

6. Product Range
The menu bar lists categories from clothing and accessories to Bags to beauty,
home decor and fitness products. Whatever you browse through, there are many
filters to make your search easy, just as most e-Commerce portals do. Limeroad
deals with more than 350 brands and thousands of items.
Payment mode
Available modes of payment for the product while shopping are:
 COD
 Credit card
 Debit card
 Net banking
 Paytm
 Payumoney
 Mobikwik

7. The Growth
They set out to build Limeroad in 2012 and have grown in strength since then. Suchi says
that the platform is seeing very encouraging numbers in terms of visual user generated
content —- 250,000+ units of unique user generated visual content per month – these
are unique looks. Some pointers:
 The traffic has been up 10 times since April 2013
 600+ vendors, up 10 times since April 13 (50% unique to Limeroad)
 India accounts for $200billion (21%) of global manufacturing of lifestyle
 5x orders since January 2014 v/s 2x marketing
 Mobile a/c for 60% transactions
 Limeroad strives to make the visuals best placed to transcend vernacular.
(even people not conversant in English would be conversant with the site)
Suchi says that, “We are going after the 400000 smartphones that will be around in 2016,
out of which 30-50% will belong to women.”
Revenue Model
Their supply side model – a tightly managed marketplace – makes them extremely
capital efficient. In other words, they do not commit working capital to hold / block
inventory. They make money when vendors sell i.e. a commission revenue (% of sales).
Business & monetization model
 No inventory, capital light
 High repeat rate business. 600% growth in last 12 month. 85% organic.
 Commission income from vendors for products sold.

8. Reasons for Investor’s confidence
It is not very common to see a three year old Indian startup raise more than $20 million
in two big chunks. Raising capital is definitely not the end game but raising funds is
essential to grow quickly and helps in multiple ways. Reason for investor’s confidence are
given below:
 Quality of the team.
 Clear traction on metrics. Limeroad has the highest in-session engagement
metrics in the country, and the only company in the country with exploding
unique visual user generated content.
 Clear alignment on vision- From the start our investors Matrix partners and
Lightspeed venture Partners shared our vision of creating largest shopping
platform for women in India.
Top Competitors
They compete only with themselves and with the rest of the offline lifestyle options for
users. Currently <1% lifestyle vendors are online in a market which at factory prices
accounts for 20% of global production of lifestyle.
No one has our level of nearly 2 million new looks and products; 95% of what one sees
on the platform is unique to Limeroad. It is the leaders in social mobile commerce.
Innovative Approach
They are the pioneers in visual social content used in Indian commerce. They are
transforming lives in the process. “LImeroad scrapbook” is one of the way of getting out
there, from the boundaries. Limeroad is the first portal to use the concept of scrapbook
which somewhere adds value to it. By this people can visualize well. It is well known by
their tag line which is: “Love. Create. Share. Shop”

9. Customer Satisfaction
The community posted nearly 20000 style statements as “scrapbooks” last month alone.
That’s a 100x growth in less than a year. They grew GMV 600% in the last 12 months,
there are passionate users who visited our app on average more than 84 times a year.
As a result 85% of their orders come from organic traffic. Great consumer brands are built
from building a tremendously passionate loyal base of customers, who love something
fundamental about the product
.
The Road ahead
Limeroad launched its Android mobile app 3 months ago, and already it accounts for
over 40% of our products sold.
Limeroad didn’t disclose the team strength but is in the process of expanding their teams
mostly across technology and sourcing. Regarding building a team, Suchi says, “People
are our most critical asset and we almost always look for people with a real spike and
with a strong can-do. Experience is secondary in a world where we are redefining the
rules every day.”
Limeroad is on a mission to build the most extensive delightful discovery platform with a
focus on South-East Asia.