BENGALURU: Flipkart is in the process of repositioning its brand as India’s largest online retailer looks to capture the next 100 million customers, a majority of which would come from tier-II and III towns.
The company will continue to drive more usage among the existing 100 million users, who are present in metros and tier-I markets.
The new brand called ‘Naye India ke Saath’, will focus on rolling out several ‘progressive India’ initiatives to create a more ‘relatable Indian brand’, as Flipkart will dial up on adding more affordability instruments which currently contributes 15% of the overall gross merchandise volume (GMV).
“We will come up with several solutions in the next 6-18 months to address the new wave of 100 million customers,” said Shoumyan Biswas, VP of marketing at Flipkart. “For example, only 35 million people have credit cards, so we want to create credit options for the remaining population that doesn’t have credit cards.”
Experts, however, cautioned that forming a ‘relatable Indian brand’ is neither the monopoly of an Indian company anymore, nor is it a cutting-edge USP. “Flipkart is trying to capitalise on being an Indian brand and is coming out with these Indiacentric innovations, but I sense similar innovations coming from Amazon and soon from Alibaba,” said Harish Bijoor, CEO at Harish Bijoor Consults. “These competencies are not unique any more because the world catches up really fast.”
Case in point is Amazon India’s ad campaign during the annual flagship sale in 2017, when the American company not only tried to bank on the Indian sentiment of shopping together for the festivals, but also launched television ads in some of the regional languages. Flipkart, on the other hand, diversified its marketing attempts by creating one lakh videos to be promoted via digital marketing apart from traditional routes.
The last time Flipkart launched a branding campaign was in mid-2015 with a tagline ‘Ab Har Wish Hogi Poori’ — a phase when Flipkart spent large amounts of marketing dollars to create brand awareness. Since then, they have focused on trimming marketing and branding expenses to maintain a lean profit and loss statement, and have also claimed to be spending onethird of its rival Amazon’s marketing costs.
Flipkart’s advertising strategies have also evolved since then. “Around 2014-15, our advertising was majorly offline,” said Biswas. “Now it is more targeted with a combination of offline, digital marketing, Flipkart touchpoints and the ecosystem.”
Marketing and branding analysts believe Flipkart is currently in a phase to create stability unlike Amazon India, which is in an investment heavy phase — which will continue to be so for the next two-three years.
“Flipkart has managed to create a digital channel with their customers which is why they don’t need print, TV or radio as much. But, they (Flipkart) will need a different language, tone and decibel (in their marketing initiatives) for the rural shoppers as compared to what worked in the urban markets,” added Bijoor.
Source : https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/flipkart-on-rebranding-route-to-get-next-100-million-customers/articleshow/63278840.cms