How JustDial is Transforming Local SME Business Facilitating to Sell Goods Online ?

JustDial the Local eCommerce GiantJust Dial which started off as Local Search business & sort of Yellow Pages has quickly transformed itself into an enable for commerce facilitating its already existing network of SMEs to sell their products & services online through Just Dial Search Plus platform.

India has its issues in terms of logistics and hence, just replication of the business models in China (where military logistics were developed) and in US (where logistics infrastructure got developed as early as World War II) would not work and India-specific business models need to be developed. Hence, there is likely to be scope for proximity-based selling. In addition, people have hesitation in closing the last leg of the transaction online, which a model like Justdial helps wherein you can call or reach through mobile/web and even do the last leg offline. Thirdly, the SMEs in India have inherent efficiencies wherein their staff can be utilised to deliver at limited additional cost and in most cases for bulky items offline vendors also deliver to the customers’ homes.

All products & Services at one go
The company is working on the concept of Sab Kuch, which means “everything” in Hindi, and believes that if some elements of Search Plus are launched and the remaining are shown as “in progress”, they may not be taken positively. Further, the company believes if it falls short in any Search Plus service it is better to fail fast and recover rather than fail later as a failure in one Search Plus service could jeopardize others.

Just Dial Vendor Interface
The company believes that the complexity is more at the back-end rather than at the front-end in terms of development wherein the back-end interfaces are different for different Search Plus services. In some cases a vendor app has been developed, while in some other cases SMS-based responses are still the fastest way of response, given that vendors are not connected to the internet. The company is spending a lot of effort in educating vendors in this regard and vendor app adoption is typically higher when the volume of transactions being routed to vendors exceeds a limit. In addition, a lot of effort is being spent on sending multi-lingual messages in 21 languages to vendors.

Customer Satisfaction Check After Transaction
Justdial is following strict empanelment policies wherein any shortfall in delivery leads to stoppage of leads, secondary people are being employed to train vendors extensively, sales persons are pre-emptively talking to establishment owners to ensure orders are taken seriously and the company is running extensive quality checks wherein for high value items it could be of the order of 100% as well, wherein for low value items typically 45-70% of the item delivery has been cross checked in the initial stages.

JD Cash – Mobile Wallet
JD Cash is Justdial’s wallet offering. The company has indicated that while the development of JD Cash is complete, it is checking the legal validity of the application before it proceeds on the launch.

With Brand retailers having at least 30% margins, their was business case for eCommerce to come and eat into their slice. With Just Dial’s Search Plus Platform, retailers will compete with online marketplaces as well facilitate their walk-in customers a hybrid model aka omni-channel retailing enabled to all the sections of business without any investment in IT Development / Infrastructure by Just Dial is a great business model.