How are E-tailers generating revenues by educating sellers?

ASSOCHAM & PwC reported that e-commerce industry is predicted to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 35% and cross the $100 billion mark in terms of value by the end of the next five years. All credit goes the ever-growing population, more and more online purchases, transforming middle class income and easy accessibility of internet on smartphones and desktops is the reason behind the increase in sales on online platforms. Considering the exceptional growth of e-commerce retailers in India, there is also a need to ensure that sellers are well trained to handle vast number of clients.  To be successful in online business, it’s important for online brands to introduce training programmes for sellers by forging partnerships with education and training players.  Looking at the e-commerce boom in India, now e-tailers are joining hands with educational organisations to train their sellers and augment their sales in turn. As per the ongoing trend, Aptech Ltd – which is popularly known as the global education company, has clinched a deal with one of the Nation’s largest E-commerce player Flipkart to provide skill- building programmes to train the sellers in upgrading their proficiency that will allow them to excel in the e-retail business.

Lately, Amazon India too introduced training courses for its sellers via a programme called Sellers University. Under this initiative, Amazon India runs a slew of programmes enabling new vendors to join e-tailer’s platform. A channel on YouTube teaches potential vendors about the marketplace model and how to sell through it. Following the footsteps of two biggies, Delhi-based Snapdeal is currently supporting its sellers via Snapdeal Plus which helps sellers with order management and last-mile delivery warehousing.

Training your sellers for best revenues

As E-commerce space is catching up fast in every corner of the country, e-tailers need to bring out innovative solutions to beat the competition within the market and cement their strong position. Elucidating about the latest partnership, Pravir Arora, EVP and Head of Enterprise Business, Aptech Ltd, said: “The E –commerce players are encouraging sellers to undergo training immediately upon joining the ecosystem. For doing this, Aptech is supporting them by taking end to end responsibilities of inviting the sellers through their tele-calling team, familiarising them through the process of the respective organisations through customised training modules and then testing them on the modules trained. The sellers are given enough encouragement to devote their time so that they can go live in the shortest possible duration and start their journey in the ecommerce world.” Aptech will be providing this training in Delhi, Jaipur, Indore, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad among 25 other cities. On the other side, Manish Maheshwari, VP & Head – Seller Ecosystem, Flipkart says: "As India’s largest e-commerce marketplace, our focus is to enhance our sellers’ abilities across the country and facilitate their growth. Our partnership with Aptech will empower our sellers with the required skills to expand their online business and cater to the demand for a wider set of customers.” With this training, Flipkart is expected to bring on board over one lakh trained sellers by the end of this year. 

To give hands on expertise to the sellers, Aptech is providing course for sellers to understand how to operate the seller portal on Flipkart. This is very crucial for the seller to be able to display their products and enable buyers to purchase them. There are a lot of other things which needs to be in place, such as having studio quality product images, proper description of the products etc. However during the training, the process is explained and demonstrated live. Sellers who are prepared have the provision to go live with their products during the training itself. The training covers the cycle of registering, uploading products, dispatching, collecting payments, returns and dispute management.

 “The E-commerce space is expanding in various dimensions simultaneously. This means there are more opportunities for new sellers and more opportunities for the existing sellers. To explore these, the sellers will have to keep updating their own knowledge. Every e-commerce portal is trying to introduce something new and unique; hence there are many new things to be learnt. Aptech will be a major player in the knowledge front, which means we will continue to innovate to meet the changing market scenario,” adds Pravir Arora.