Norwest Venture Partners-backed lifestyle products ecommerce startup Pepperfry is now live. The eight month-old startup, which is based in Mumbai, raised $5 million in Series A funding last month. It hit the market yesterday with 25,000 products on offer across categories such as furniture, clothing, jewellery and home decor. The company offers features like free shipping and cash-on-delivery and guarantees delivery within 2-5 days. Products can also be returned under specific guidelines – within 30 days from the date of invoice, except for a 365-days buy-back policy on precious jewellery. Pepperfry’s founders Ashish Shah and Ambareesh Murty detail the company’s plans for the next 12 months in an email interview with Startupcentral. Edited excerpts:
What does the name Pepperfy signify?
Murty: We wanted to build a business that was proudly Indian and fun to be part of. Our brand Pepperfry reflects our intentions. Pepper is honest, proudly India and you can’t miss it. Fry symbolizes fun.
How does the company plan to use the $5 million raised recently from Norwest?
Murty: The funds are being used for operating expenses and to build a strong logistics infrastructure. We are conscious that a sustainable business requires topline growth with a strong underlying financial architecture. Therefore, our investments will be directed towards aspects that contribute to a great consumer experience.
Can you share some details on your sourcing strategy?
Shah: We work with SMEs (small and medium enterprises), artisans and businesses to source a variety of lifestyle products. We then tightly control merchandizing, item quality and customer experience. The company has storage, packaging and shipping units in Delhi, Mumbai and Jodhpur, from where products are sourced. We also have an on-ground presence in other major sourcing cities such as Surat and Jaipur. The controlled, in-house merchandizing ensures that we provide accurate information for items. All products are dispatched to customers after quality checks. Currently, we ship free to 17,000 pin codes across 300 Indian cities, offer cash-on-delivery on most products and also export to 220 other countries.
What has been the initial response to the launch?
Shah: Pepperfry was in exclusive beta prior to Christmas in 2011. Employees and friends tested it and we moved to open beta on January 3 this year. People loved the range of products available. Over 200 orders are currently being serviced.
What specifically differentiates Pepperfry from other ecommerce players?
Shah: First, our unprecedented range. We offer 25,000 pocket-happy products across categories. We’re also investing in human resources. Our category managers have rich vertical experience, which translates into only the best products being selected and presented to our customers. The tight control over merchandizing and product quality enables us to offer a great customer experience. Finally, we enable SMEs, artisans and craftsmen to make their products available to our customers.
How do you plan to address the late mover disadvantage compared to leading ecommerce players such as Flipkart and SnapDeal?
Murty: The purchase of lifestyle products though huge offline, hasn’t yet scaled online. Lifestyle ecommerce, therefore, is still early stage and opportunities exist for companies which provide a good experience in this segment. Also, ecommerce is not about the winner-takes-all and therefore we believe that there will be enough opportunities for multiple shopping sites to grow and expand their customer base. This has been the case in more evolved ecommerce markets such as the US and South Korea.
What kind of growth targets have you set for yourself in the first year of operations?
Shah: We will continue to expand our product range in every category with new and unique products for India and foreign customers. We aim to constantly improve the customer experience by adding new payment and delivery options and social sharing features. Our site is not optimized for mobile yet, but we will look to build a portfolio of mobile applications that enable customers to interact and enjoy our product range.
Murty: We will continue to evaluate adjacencies; kids and health are on the radar. We will look to build logistics and storage infrastructure in other countries to streamline cross-border trade and continue to invest in building a team which will help us build an India-based global brand.
How many people do you employ at present?
Murty: Over the last few months, we’ve grown to more than 70 people. I expect the team to double in size over the coming months. We have a great balance of offline and online retail talent.
Image Courtesy: Pepperfry
Try placing an order on Cash on Delivery using pepper points and they would not allow you redeem your pepper points, pepper points can be redeemed only with prepaid orders …why? Sites
like pepperfry.com are luring gullible people at large by throwing 500 discounts coupons with minimum purchase of 1000 which they call as pepper points, now let me for benefit of everyone caution people not to get lured by such deals and companies, they will take money from you and will not process order. People must understand that such sites maybe running with sole intent of fraud and not to honor orders. If they are so clean and honest why do not they allow people to use their discounts wit h cash on delivery orders so people build up trust with them over a time, but here maybe they have different agenda like they did it with me. Yesterday I have placed an order with them and used this discount with it since i am new to them i thought to test them first by using Cash on Delivery option but to my surprise they did not allow me redeem discount with Cash on Delivery, so i decided to give them a try and paid them online through netbanking and amount got debited from my bank account, after one makes a payment bank site moves you back to merchant site pepperfry here and i got a response on there page and I quote “Thank you! Your order is being processed and should get confirmed soon.” After waiting for few hours patiently of confirmation email which never came in, I called there customer care help line and one of there agent name Sandy(which i am sure is a fake name too) said to me that she is escalating the same and should get resolved in next few hours, in between i also wrote an email and attached proof of my bank statement so to substantiate my claim even though there agent sandy refused it as she said bank statement is not required, I did it out of my own courtesy, since no one called me till late evening I called them up again and coincidentally same girl picked the phone and now she took a complete U turn and said that she never said it would be resolved in few hours and that it may take 48 hours now and hung up the phone on me. I wonder these agents who work for petty salaries have attitude and air to the like of bollywood filmstars – shame on them and surely comapny covering and protecting them and giving them covering or maybe they are trained such way so to toss people at large. People must also note that they should not get mislead by facebook apreciations and likes of such websites because on facebook one can make many account and keep appreciating there own company and at same time on facebook they have control to hide such post where people may be wanting to escalate there issues and experiences for public at large so to bring into notice of everyone practices adopted by such companies, so there facebook page would always keep them clean and customer friendly but reality maybe far different. I will surely forget about my money after few days with a very sour experience but i thought to help out many who may just get lured and place order with them only to feel cheated and save them from loosing there hard earned money.
What may i achieve out of this after all I can substantiate my review if anyone wants to check I just want to safeguard interest of many out there who may not suffer to hands of such companies/websites.
sincerely Vikas