Vishesh Khurana, Co-Founder (Growth), Shiprocket
Vishesh is a dedicated Entrepreneur accomplished in concept development, feasibility analysis, and securing the funding necessary over the last 5 years. He founded three ventures and funded Startups with successful exits.
Podcast
Overview
‘Your package is arriving soon, isn’t this the most exciting line you read after ordering something. But have you thought about what goes behind post-checkout?
After a customer has placed an order on any e-commerce site and made their payment, Shiprocket takes over. Today, we have Vishesh Khurana, Co-Founder (Growth), Shiprocket to discuss this platform in detail.
About Vishesh Khurana, Co-Founder (Growth), Shiprocket
Vishesh is a dedicated Entrepreneur accomplished in concept development, feasibility analysis, and securing the funding necessary over the last 5 years. He founded three ventures and funded Startups with successful exits.
About Shiprocket:
Shiprocket is a post-checkout experience. It offers tools and technologies required for everything post-checkout of an order. Starting with warehousing, packaging, selection of a courier partner, shipping tracking management and end-consumer communication, and ending with return management.
The motivation behind this venture is our customers. This is the third product by the same company. We entered in 2012 as a shopping cart. We helped e-commerce SMEs to start an e-commerce website. While we grew, we learned about their challenges and launched a marketplace to solve demand and logistics.
Returns on Shiprocket
Majorly, we deal with personal care products with no return policy. But for the products that are returned, we do quality check returns. A large problem with a large problem about returns is the non-sealability of products.
This comes with a loss because we pay for the logistics of a product that is not sellable. Our partners do a quality check of the product that they pick up to ensure that these are at least resellable. We bring the product to the nearest warehouse, which cuts the costs of shipping.
Evolution of Supply Chain
It is all about speed and massive distribution, widespread warehouses. It’s all about demand planning, distribution, and reducing the time and distance. A lot has changed over the last 18-20 months. We have become really fast.
Technology in Logistics:
It is no more about ground operations. Now the technology is even going into predicting that you will order tomorrow. So if you can predict demand patterns of a certain geographical pin code and store the right SKU (Stock-keeping Unit) that will enable you to deliver in 10 minutes
Customers’ expectations post-pandemic
Now, the only thing that is important is the trust of the customer. When they see a product on a website that they never heard of, they become skeptical. They get worried about the quality of the product and online frauds.
So here the responsibility of the provider increases. If we are delivering a product from the seller, we need to gain the trust of the customer and seller. We are trying to become the trust layer between both parties.
Challenges and learnings while Scaling-Up Shiprocket
As entrepreneurs, we have learned about people. When you have a large employee base working for you, the biggest challenge in the Indian e-commerce system is awareness. If there is something wrong with the product, the customer can lodge a complaint.
They hold us responsible for that. Getting through the expectation to speed deliveries and managing the supply chain of thousands of warehouses is a challenge in itself.
Changes taking place in optimizing the supplies
People are looking for quality products. They are not bothered with the prices anymore. And the premium brands have cracked this. They are offering what India needed. It is all about matching demands now.
D2C evolved in the last 18-24 months in the most competitive categories where global players dominated.
Profile
Vishesh is a dedicated Entrepreneur accomplished in concept development, feasibility analysis, and securing the funding necessary over the last 5 years. He founded three ventures and funded Startups with successful exits.
