ShopClues plans Nasdaq listing, increase its offline reach

Unstructured category marketplace player Shopclues on Tuesday said that ShopClues is planning to file for a Nasdaq listing and would be garnering sales worth $two billion on its platform in 2017. 

“With last investment round in January, ShopClues is valued at around Rs 7,100 crore. We were earlier expecting gross merchandise volume of $2.3-2.5 billion in 2017 but due to demonetisation, we expect our topline to be around $2 billion," Sanjay Sethi ShopClues chief executive officer and co-founder.

On plans to go for public listing, Sethi said, “We expect to file our documents with Nasdaq for listing by September 2017 but the IPO will depend on market condition.” He further said the customer traffic on its platform has fallen 30 per cent after the scrapping of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes by the government on November 8. 

In 2015, online marketplace giant Flipkart was supposedly eyeing an international listing, however changing ecommerce market climate has pushed the company's decision to launch an IPO indefinitely. According to industry experts, having a Nasdaq listing helps companies get into an exclusive club of sorts as only companies with solid credentials make the cut. 

“We were expecting the demonetisation impact to have gone by now. Business traffic is almost back to normal. There is still five per cent depression in traffic compared to one we see during this period,” Sethi added. 

The company launched a SMS-based payment service ‘Reach’ for merchants after the demonetisation drive to help facilitate cashless transactions at a monthly subscription fee of Rs 99. 

“If merchants are on ShopClues platform, this means they are already on e-platform. We can help people in organised business to grow but can't help those who are in undocumented economy. 'Reach' will help merchants who are looking for growth by enabling them go for hassle-free cashless transaction in three steps,” Sethi said. 

The company hopes to add around one lakh more offline merchants via this new feature on their platform.

Using this platform, merchants will feed the transaction amount and mobile number of the customer. 

After this, the customer will receive an SMS with a link of payment where he can pay using net banking or mobile wallet. ShopClues has over five lakh sellers on its platform and ships products in over 30,000 pin codes across India.