Technology is reshaping India’s online retail: Unicommerce
Online shopping in India is growing by leaps and bounds. According to consulting firm Bain & Company’s report of October 2022, India’s e-retail market was estimated to be $50 billion in 2022, growing at 25% over 2021. By 2027, the market is expected to grow to $150–$170 billion, with up to 1 in 10 retail dollars spent online.
This fast-paced growth of India’s online retail is supported by a host of technology solutions which power each aspect of online shopping – including targeted advertising, efficient discovery of products, ease of placing orders, secure payments, trackable deliveries and an overall optimised and personalised experience for the users.
When an user makes an online purchase, it triggers a series of activities that cover the entire range from receiving the order to delivering it to the customer’s doorstep. Technology facilitates every aspect of the transaction – from locating the ordered item from a vast inventory, verifying the delivery address, and tracking the shipment until it reaches the customer. Retail SaaS platform, Unicommerce is the power behind many of these technology solutions that keep the wheels of e-commerce running smoothly.
As online sales continue to increase and businesses sell on multiple platforms, e-commerce fulfilment becomes more complex, making it near impossible for companies to handle large order volumes manually. Unicommerce has helped numerous brands streamline their supply chain operations through automation, resulting in a better shopping experience for customers. Unicommerce offers a comprehensive suite of solutions viz., Warehouse and Inventory Management Solution, Multi- Channel
Order Management Solution, Omnichannel Solutions and Seller Panel for Marketplace.
An increasing number of businesses operate from multiple warehouses in order to manage growing volumes and to improve delivery speeds. Unicommerce’s Warehouse Management Solution allows brands to integrate all their warehouses and provide a centralised platform to view all orders and the entire inventory on one panel. This helps businesses automate tasks like real-time inventory management, automated purchase management, finding products in and across multiple warehouses, routing and tracking shipments, packaging and allocation to the correct shipping provider. By automating these processes, brands can improve the efficiency of their warehouse operations and boost business performance.
Unicommerce’s client-facing application Uniware captures the data of all stocked products and enables businesses to easily integrate their inventory on multiple marketplaces and brand websites. This allows businesses to view all orders they receive in one place rather than having to go to each platform separately. Additionally, brands can do analysis of all the stocks, and easily manage multi-product and multi-city orders. The platform provides flexibility to track inventory on various parameters including Item-level traceability (unique serialisation), SKU-level traceability (serialisation at EAN or SKU level), batching (serialisation at batch level), and None level traceability. The multi-level traceability further simplifies online selling for house of brands and roll-up firms as it allows them to manage the diverse product portfolio through a centralised platform.
In today’s connected retail environment, where consumers have constant access to multiple online and offline sales channels, brands are striving to provide a seamless shopping experience. Unicommerce’s Omnichannel Retail technology helps retail businesses with a strong online and offline presence. The solution connects all the online and offline channels of the business on a single system to ensure that consumers can shop, experience, buy or return any product anywhere digitally or offline.
The Unicommerce platform caters to various product categories and the company has streamlined operations for thousands of clients to ensure a great post-purchase experience for their consumers. Unicommerce solutions are deployed across multiple categories including established categories such as FMCG, Fashion, Apparel, Footwear, Eyewear, Personal care, Health and Pharmaceuticals, and emerging segments such as Pet care, Home decor, Nutraceuticals, Toys, Baby products, and Car accessories. Additionally, the platform serves fulfilment providers, roll-up firms, and 3PLs using which they can manage different types of businesses through a centralised dashboard.
Apart from India, Unicommerce is present in various international markets and is serving clients in Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia in South East Asia and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates in the Middle East. It continues to enhance its products features to meet specifics of various markets. Some of the new features include label and invoice printing in the Arabic language, International shipping and automated local-tax compliance processes in various nations.
The last two years have seen brands move past the technology affirmation stage. The upcoming years offer an exciting glimpse of technology playing a greater role in moulding online retail, in India and elsewhere.
