Nilekani backs hyperlocal e-commerce start-up 10i Commerce

Invests Rs 25-30 crore in the Bengaluru start-up, his first in an e-commerce firm

Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani has backed 10i Commerce Services, an e-commerce start-up, which is building a model of getting thousands of small vendors sell products and services on a smartphone app for local users in remote parts of the country.
 

The Bengaluru-based start-up recruits small vendors in towns and villages, who will assist locals to buy online through the ShopX smartphone app the company has built. It offers its services in six local languages to allow non-English speakers to conveniently shop on the app. The platform has got over 13,000 retailers on board and expects to touch over 100,000 retailers across India in the next few months.
 

"I believe that the future of India’s development and growth has to be domestic led, services led, and achieved by platforms that aggregate rather than by large monolithic companies. So, I see the future as platforms that aggregate taxis (Uber and Ola) or manufacturers (Amazon and Flipkart) or aggregate farmers etc. This will also enable millions of people joining the formal economy," Nilekani wrote in an e-mail response. 
 

"I believe in 10i as it is going to aggregate lakhs of small retailers onto a platform and give them the best products, technology, supply chain and customer service capabilities. This will enable them to compete with organised retail and e-commerce," he said.
 

So far, Nilekani, who has advocated that the aggregator model would change India's business dynamics than large monolithic companies, has invested around Rs 25-30 crore in the one-year old start-up founded by Amit Sharma and Apoorva Jois. Sharma and Jois had earlier built the private label e-commerce firm Go Untucked. 10i is the first e-commerce firm that Nilekani, a prolific investor, is backing. 
 

" ShopX provides access to relevant information to the masses in India. If you provide the right access to information, it will change people's lives," said Sharma. "It is a platform that has unlimited possibilities.  We are a product marketplace, we can be a content marketplace, a job marketplace, where consumers can pay cash at our vendors and buy products or services." 
 

India's e-commerce industry is estimated to be around $23  billion in 2015, less than a per cent of overall retail sales in the country.
 

"The organised retail reaches 0.7 per cent creamy layer of India. There is more to India than that and we are building the platform to reach them," said Sharma.
 

So far, majority of e-commerce marketplaces such as Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal have focused on urban consumers, luring them with discounts and offers, while they battle it to gain market share. As they look at building profits, these firms are slowly expanding into smaller towns, where consumers have less choice to buy brands and products that urban consumers have access to.
 

"Their (I10i)  model does not disrupt existing e-commerce and organized retail. Rather it enables small retailers to compete on equal terms. It does disrupt distribution which in India is many layered," says Nilekani.