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|In: e-commerce|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

UrbanLadderLogo

Furnishing your new home, or getting your clothes and shoes a heavenly abode such as a wardrobe can be a pain point! Urban Ladder has aimed at addressing this very issue with the launch of Urban Ladder’s wardrobes.

Urban Ladder, India’s leading online furniture & décor company is now set to redefine the modular wardrobe segment with a simple 3 step process: A,B, C: Ask for consultation, Build on the app and Convenient Installation.

Urban ladder’s launch of modular wardrobes enables its customers to build their customized wardrobes with the ease of access to their wardrobe consultants and specialist paired with wardrobe configurator app, Urban Storage!

It’s as easy as selecting a suitable time for the consultant to visit your home, once at your home the wardrobe specialists will use the Urban Storage app to take you through Urban Ladder’s designs and help configure the right internal partitions for your space, and storage requirements.

Urban Ladder offers a choice of swing or sliding doors, PLPB or Plywood based carcasses, multiple internal configurations based on understanding of customers’ needs and fully customized lofts. You will also get a sense of what our finishes look and feel like with the help of the swatches that the consultants carry. You can configure the design and other intricate details with over 1000 configuration options on the wardrobe configurator app.

Best of materials, hardware and expert care all at a click of a button.

More details about the Urban Ladder’s Modular Wardrobes can be found here

Note : Free wardrobe consultation available for Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Delhi customers [will be extended to more cities soon].

|In: Funding|Last Updated:

Zopper, India’s leading hyper-local mobile marketplace, has recently unveiled its fully operational office in Bengaluru. The underlying motive behind this strategic move is to bolster its technological prowess, by recruiting talent in vital areas of operations and technology. With the city famed for its IT talent, the company aims to invest in the same to scale the growth ladder through rapid improvement in its technological foundation.

Zopper

Neeraj Jain, Co-founder & CEO, Zopper commented

With the hyper local mobile marketplace trending, thanks to the increasing proliferation of smartphones in the country, we realize that in order to leverage this opportunity, we must strengthen our services in terms of technology.

Our vital presence in Bengaluru gives us access to head-hunt and hire across the cream of talent in terms of IT. This will help us architect a seamless and solid infrastructure for Zopper’s fast expanding network in the country.

The company aims to activate expansion on an accelerated pace pan India and is taking definite steps to successfully execute its plan on the back of steady technological progress.

About Zopper

Zopper is India’s largest hyper local mobile marketplace featuring over 5,00,000 offline retailers. Founded by serial entrepreneurs Surjendu Kulia & Neeraj Jain, Zopper taps on the benefits of shopping at a retail store and marries them with the convenience of shopping via mobile phones.

Users can buy from the comfort of their homes/offices and get the product instantly from their nearby trusted stores. It is backed by investors such as Tiger Global, Blume Ventures & Nirvana Ventures Advisor’s, the company has raised over US$ 6.5 million in venture funding.

[Image Credit – Zopper]

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated:

Introducing the concept of showcasing ones’ own style and trends to the like minded people across the vertical, Dilbole.com, a unique style shopping platform, has been launched, bringing a whole new experience online.

DilBole aims to be a product bookmarking tool to showcase and discover style to the online community. It a platform for both men and women that offers a variety of category to choose from i.e., apparel, lingerie, accessories, gadgets, footwear, jewelry, cosmetics, furniture, home decor etc.

One can choose the products from over 25,000+ online shopping sites including Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Jabong, Myntra etc.

DilBole

The portal allows users to browse or flip through products from the other portals, create his/her own style & trend , showcase it to others and get the credit as a STYLIST!

  • Dilbole allows users to create a wish-list & categorize them into different mood attires like party wear, formals, casuals, beachwear etc. Users can then showcase their wish-list and can get the credit.
  • Users can also save the products they like from online stores, add the product using the chrome extension or using a link. On an mobile they can directly share product to Dilbole App from other shopping apps like Flipkart, Myntra etc.

Talking on the same, Khaleel Pasha, the founder of DilBole.com said

Dilbole.com aims to bring out the stylist within the person to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and smart buys. Style is just not the periphery of any gender. I would like to invite both Men and Women to join the “Stylocase” wagon with our portal and app.

They can now make their own style statement with the collections and can showcase it the way they like to share with others. We have tried to create a me-time for our users who love shopping

In a short span of time, since its launch Dilbole.com has succeeded in attracting and engaging people and won huge accolades. It guarantees loads of fun, fashion and style for fashion junkies and shopaholics at Dilbole.

DilBole.com is the right place to discover people, products and brands based on the style they are looking for. Fashion bloggers, stylists, fashionistas and proud shopaholics are part of the core. With an ever-increasing database of 1,80,000+ products, 25000+ online stores and over 10,000 brands, this is the right place for shopaholics to come to!

It is available both in web portal and mobile application for android can be downloaded from here.

About the founders of DilBole.com

  • Khaleel Pasha is a master in computers science from NIT Warangal. Worked for around a decade in eRetail industry with eCom biggies like Amazon, target, mothercare and marksandspencer. He had many stints of starting up before all in eCom domain. Backed with his experience he has very deep insight into the eCommerce and social shopping space.
  • Hemakiran is a masters in computer science from BITS Pilani. Bitten by the entrepreneurship bug he joined Khaleel to change the way India shops. Before this he was with Broadcom. Experience with bootstrapped start-ups made Kiran a package of diverse skill-sets. He takes care of design and marketing aspects of Dilbole.

Do give DilBole.com a spin & share your experience 🙂

|In: Blogging|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

Subject lines are incredibly influential in deciding the course of your email campaigns. After all they ensure whether someone even opens the campaign; your first step towards engagement. If it weren’t for a convincing subject line no would even bother to open your campaigns. Thus, Subject lines play a very pivotal role in getting the first step towards engagement.

But are subject lines that critical? Yes! Consider a normal advertisement you saw off Facebook or your TV. How long does the ad stay relevant? Only for a few moments. Now consider the fact that the inbox won’t throw out emails if they remain unopened.

Emails linger in the inbox long after they get placed. As one can never truly predict when a campaign connects with a subscriber; a strong and influential subject line can drive opens even if it takes the subscriber a few days.

A subject line is the first impression of your email marketing campaign. And as they say “first impression last”, your subject lines carry more weight-age than you would think.

subject-line-image

Are there any rules to Subject Line creation?

Yes! And No!

This might seem slightly confusing but there are no hard & fast rules to designing a good and effective subject line. Subject lines can be interpreted in various manners, so one subject line might not suit all groups within your audience. Nevertheless, there are some elements you should steer away from when designing your subject lines.

Long and boring!

Studies conducted across various demographics depict a clear correlation between opens and length of subject lines. Ideally and statistically shorter subject lines are better at prompting opens. This is primarily because no one has got the time to read big sentences when only a few words can convey the intention of the campaign. Consider another factor; typically you can see up to 40 -60 characters on your subject line, when using a computer.

On smartphones your subject line are bound to get truncated when casually viewing the inbox. Having short subject lines that give clear and concise intentions connect better with all groups. It’s all about being visible.

It’s all psychological!

In truest essence, subject lines deal with the psyche of the individual and certain words can push the subject line further. Having subject lines designed around particular words can greatly influence a subscriber. Appropriate phrasing plays significant role in determining the effectiveness of subject lines. Here’s a compilation of various categories of keywords that can be deployed in subject lines:

  1. Benefit – If your subject line conveys the benefits of opening the campaign certain words out perform others. For example the word “cheapest” has a negative influence in read rates as opposed to “fastest” or “quickest”
  2. Clickbait – If you’ve been thinking that clickbait keywords still work their magic, you’re wrong. Clickbait words no longer influence opens, in fact they are counter-productive
  3. Commanding words – Commanding words are quite tricky, because no one likes to be bossed around. Words like “register”, “add” or “try” influence opens far more than “buy”, “call” or “click”
  4. Discount and price oriented keywords – A majority of e-commerce brands heavily rely on phrases like “2 for 1”, “clearance sale”, “half off” or mention price drops in the subject lines. The only way these subject lines works are when the discount offered is significantly large. Such words are way too common in the email ecosystem, hence it easy to look past such routine subject lines
  5. Urgency – Subject lines that indicate urgency generate high open rates. However phrasing still acts as an influencer. Consider two subject lines; “30% Off on Shoes, Limited time only” and “30% Off on Shoes, Expiring soon”. The former will pay better results.

Subject lines are quite a tricky affair, but one cannot undermine their worth. It’s vital to devise clever and original subject lines to get audience to open campaigns. One can truly say that Subject lines are skillful art; you have to be expressive and clever, while maintain brevity and clarity.

And as all email strategies of email marketing service provider go; you need to test, test and test some more. A/B split testing with different subject lines can give insight on which work and which don’t. Analysis of these results should aid in developing a psychological angle to identify how different groups respond to different subject lines.

Once you’re clear of varying inclinations of segments in the audience, subject line creation would be a piece of cake. But don’t stick to the same practices for every campaign; innovate to improve efficiency.

About the author

Shantam Dubey is Assistant SEO manager at iCubes.in. You can have a look at his complete profile here

Image Credit* – thephorest

|In: Business|Last Updated:

Urban-LadderWeb & Technology entrepreneurs Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan have made an investment in Urban Ladder, India’s leading online furniture and home decor company.  The Silicon Valley based entrepreneurs have come on board as investors at a time when the company is ramping up its technology platforms and offerings, to redefine furniture shopping in India.

Technology will be a key driver in Urban Ladder’s growth. The company is working on several tech innovations to solve complex furniture e-commerce problems.

Some of the key focus areas for Urban Ladder are mobile, data and analytics and product visualization. In an effort to provide world class furniture shopping solutions, the company will triple the size of its tech team in the next 6 months.

Speaking about the latest round, Ashish Goel, CEO & Co-founder, Urban Ladder said

We are thrilled to have veterans like Anand and Venky onboard as investors to mentor and guide us. They have done some fantastic work in technology, and set very high global benchmarks. It is great that they believe in the potential of the Indian e-commerce industry and are reinvesting in the ecosystem

Speaking about the funding, Anand Rajaraman, Founding Partner, Cambrian Ventures said

Furniture and home décor is a highly unorganized category in India, and Urban Ladder has been able to fill the need gap by finding great solutions for customers. The company’s journey has been very impressive. It’s a great team, off to a terrific start, and well positioned to be the leading furniture and home decor company in India

Urban Ladder is on massive growth path to achieve its vision of making a million homes beautiful. The company is strengthening its product portfolio and introducing new categories, along with geographical expansion to 30 cities by the end of the year.

Urban Ladder has thus far raised $77 million from Sequoia Capital, TR Capital, Kalaari Capital, SAIF Partners and Steadview Capital in the last 3 years. Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus, Tata Group made a personal investment in the company in November 2014.

|In: Business|Last Updated:

Urban Ladder, India’s leading online furniture & home decor company has raised $50 million in a new round of funding. Sequoia Capital led the round along with TR Capital and existing investors Steadview Capital, SAIF Partners & Kalaari Capital.

urban-ladder

Urban Ladder was launched in July 2012 with a vision of making a million Indian homes beautiful. It offers a curated range of over 4000 products across 35+ categories in furniture and home decor. The company is on a massive growth path and is making distinctive designs and exceptional customer service accessible to many Indian shoppers.

Speaking about the round, Gautam Mago, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors.

We are delighted to partner with Urban Ladder in their vision of making quality home products available online to millions of Indian consumers, and look forward to working with Ashish, Rajiv and the rest of the Urban Ladder team to help build an enduring business.

Ashish Goel, CEO & Co-founder, Urban Ladder mentioned:

Over the last 3 years, we have stayed sharply focused on our design thinking, product quality and customer experience. While these will continue to be important themes, geographical expansion will also be a key focus area this year. We will be present in 30 cities by the end of 2015.

Rajiv Srivatsa, COO & Co-founder, Urban Ladder said

Technology will be a key driver in Urban Ladder’s growth. The company is working on several tech innovations to solve complex furniture e-commerce problems. “We are investing heavily in technology to introduce world class tech innovations that will massively simplify furniture shopping

Urban Ladder has attracted $27 million from Kalaari Capital, SAIF Partners and Steadview Capital in the last 3 years. Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus, Tata Group made a personal investment in the company in November 2014.

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated:

With the growth of online-commerce in India, there are many businesses that have been built to cater to that explosive growth. With growing demand, there have been more startups emerging in the space of Customer Support, Last Mile Delivery/Logistics, Automation [e.g. Grey Orange Robotics]. This article in Economic Times points out that e-commerce firms are the new drivers for the BPO industry & with more startups emerging in that space, this number would surely see an upward-trend !!!

Along with Coupon & Deal websites, massive growth has been observed in the “Price Comparison” space. Now consumers are not only interested in deals but before they purchase a product, they want to “compare prices” across different e-commerce websites. This is also gives a Human Feel to shopping 🙂

Traditionally, comparing prices of any commodity would take many hours. A person would need to either call several retailers or drive from one retail store to another; however those days are gone. In simple terms, all the user has to do is choose the best “Aggregator Site” which would compare prices for multiple product categories & aggregating best e-commerce websites like Flikpart, Jabong, FirstCry etc.

Benefits of using Price Comparison Engine

Save extra money

Some studies have concluded that online-shopper can save thousands of rupees a year by using price comparison site. Just like in retail stores, higher the price of any commodity; greater is the discount. Same principle also applies to the online-world considering that there is now cut-throat competition in the e-commerce segment.

Simple to use

When using price comparison engine, a person has to enter either the name of the product or the brand, (s)he is looking out for & within few seconds, the engine would give the price comparison results.

Online-Offline comparison

As there are many price-comparison websites, it becomes essentially important to choose the right one. Each price-comparison engine depending on their revenue & operating model, would either focus on “Online” or “Offline” stores. However, if there is a price comparison engine which combines the beauty of both the world’s, it would be a boon to the customers !!!

One of the categories that has gained significant traction is “buying of mobile phones” online. As more & more companies are giving preference to “online-only” model for saving costs, buying mobile-phone online would definitely result in good savings 🙂

While scouting for price-comparison websites, we came across a site YouTellMe & we were very impressed by the search results, ease of use, breezy & simple UI etc. One of the categories which is on the rise is “Mobile Phones” and as an end-consumer you can get the best deal as we get the Mobile Phones price list in India

YouTellMe

If you are looking for some great deals & want to save some extra bucks [for buying at the right price :)], do give YouTellMe a shot !!!

With the increase of online frauds in India, it becomes necessary that “Shopper becomes Smart” & along with discounts also checks the authenticity of the e-commerce website. Some of the smart shopping tips are:

  1. Shop from “known” websites e.g. Flipkart, Jabong, Shopclues, High5Store etc.
  2. Ensure that “Digital Payment” happens over secure [SSL] channel
  3. Ensure “not to save” the Credit Card is not saved. Since, no matter how renowned, the website is; better to keep CC information to yourself !!!
  4. Compare prices of “existing products” on price-comparison engines
  5. Get additional discounts on products by grabbing coupons from coupon/deal websites
  6. Untrusted app stores will continue to be a major source of mobile malware. Traffic to these stores will be driven by “malvertising,” which has grown quickly on mobile platforms [Source – McAfee]

With more & more online startups [specifically e-commerce, deals etc.] focusing on “mobile-first approach”, it becomes very essential for the consumers to identify the “potentially harmful” apps.

Some highlights of the “McAfee Labs Threats report” are below:

Mobile Malware

McAfee Labs reported that mobile malware samples grew 14 percent during the fourth quarter of 2014, with Asia and Africa registering the highest infection rates. Much of the activity being attributed to the AirPush ad network.

Potentially Unwanted Programs

In Q4, McAfee Labs detected PUPs on 91 million systems each day. McAfee Labs sees PUPs becoming more and more aggressive, posing as legitimate apps while performing unauthorized actions such as displaying un-intended ads, modifying browser settings, or collecting user and system data.

Total Malware

McAfee Labs now detects 387 new samples of malware every minute, or more than six every second.

The full McAfee Labs Threats Report: February 2015 can be downloaded from here

We hope that these tips would help make our reader’s online “shopping experience” more joyful & also ensure that they stay away from “vulnerable mobile apps”.

If you want to share any tips, please leave them in the comments section !!!

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated:

Cleartrip, India’s leading travel portal partnered with Amazon.in, country’s leading online marketplace, to present Travel Gift Cards, an adorable and convenient way of gifting travel. Cleartrip’s Travel Gift Cards are available only and exclusively on Amazon.in

Cleartrip_Amazon

Usable to buy tickets from over 300 airlines and choose accommodation from over 3 lakh hotels, Cleartrip offers the best, most intuitive interface to make travel bookings in a jiffy with this Travel Gift Card.

Commenting on this association, Subramanya Sharma, Chief Marketing Officer at Cleartrip said

We are excited to launch our latest offering in our product suite – Gift Cards. Also what’s different in this launch is the innovation in distribution – Cleartrip gift cards are exclusively available on Amazon.in, which is doing a fabulous job of aggregating the gifting category. Cleartrip is the exclusive travel gift partner on Amazon.in and we are confident that travel gifting is a trend that will see huge uptake in the days to come.

Speaking about the launch, Srinivas Rao, General Manager Payments, Amazon India said

We are excited to be the partner of choice for Cleartrip & offer our customers an exclusive access to Cleartrip’s Travel Gift Cards. With the launch of these gift cards on Amazon.in, customers can now gift travel to their loved ones, anywhere in the country, with ease and convenience.

This is the first exclusive offering in the travel space on our platform in the Gift Cards category, which is witnessing a significant uptake since its launch in August last year. With this new offering, customers can now enjoy shopping for travel gift cards and make the most of their travel gifting needs.

Online Travel Gift Cards make special occasions memorable and are a great option that allows the freedom of choice to anyone they are presented with. You can now pamper your spouse, surprise a cousin, gift your employees, reward your business partners, thank your associates or just revel in the perfect holiday, yourself.

In 3 simple steps, the purchase is done and your Travel Gift Card is delivered to the recipient’s email id. What’s more, get 10% extra on Amazon.in as a launch offer, for Gift Cards worth Rs 1000, 2000 or 3000. After selecting the denomination, enter recipient’s email id and your personalized message and complete the payment process. The Travel Gift Card is delivered to the email provided by you and is available for redemption instantly !!!