Radhika Aggarwal talks to Akanksha Soni about recently conducted CXO Next Challenge and e-commerce platforms opening doors for budding designers
What was the idea behind CXO Next ChallengeIJ
We work very closely with the education institutions and GenNext and CXO Next Challenge is one such event where we interact with the business school students who share their thoughts and ask questions from the industry experts. We have been doing an e-commerce day where we have guests come in and talk about what it means to be a entrepreneur and a subject matter specialist or an employee that is working with new age companies.
How are students selected for this challengeIJ
Students from the top B-schools like IIT’s, ISB, IIM, IMI, MDI send us two-minute business plan videos based on a given topic. There are four categories — Operations, Category, Product and Marketing. We select a few best ideas who get an opportunity to present their idea in the form of video presentation. The students face real life challenges by business heads from different industries who judge them. For this challenge, we got around 1,500 videos out of which eight winners have been announced.
What do the winners getIJ
The winners from each category win pre-placement interviews at ShopClues and Amazon Kindle, and a chance to shadow the business head for one week, gaining hands-on experience.
What are real-time challenges faced by the e-commerce platform these days and how we can deal with itIJ
It is a new industry, there is no skilled manpower. The most experienced person we have is someone who has been in the industry for over five years. So the way we look at hiring is that, hire someone who has done something passionate in their life. We are always looking for a person who is keen in one particular aspect. For instance, if you’re a phenomenal violin player, that person has a lot of potential and will be successful in ShopClues. You just have to apply that passion to your job.
How have e-commerce sites opened doors for the budding designersIJ
We have partnered with National Institute of Fashion Technology and are working with upcoming designers to help them sell their products on our platform. We are very mainstream in case of our prices, and ranges based on the selection and variety of product that can be delivered by the new designers coming on board. We are not looking for the Masabas or Ritu Beris of the world, we are looking for what Masaba was 10 years ago, and what Ritu Beri was 20 years ago.
What is the reason behind e-commerce start-ups shutting downIJ
Consolidation of customer acquisition is a very challenging job. Customer awareness is great, but customer acquisition is what makes a single brand or organisation suffer. If that can be faced by start-ups, they can also be very successful. Start-ups have the lead in variety of products and young talent, but they tend to fail when it comes to customer acquisitions mostly.
How is GST going to impact the e-commerce platformsIJ
In some ways we are in the bad state as we are doing the job of the tax-man right now. But the fact is that GST is good for the eco-system as a whole and I think there might be problems with that, but speaking for the entire industry, we might be able to do well. It should be good for all of us in coming time.