Not your run-of-the mill ecommerce app: meet India’s first online flea market

Photo credit: Yappily.

You can discover the most exquisite things at a flea market. Hand-painted glass bottles that don’t just store water but instantly prettify your kitchen; lemongrass natural soap that leaves you smelling sweet; or a chance to strike up the best conversation you’ve had in weeks. Who knows!

I’ve seen men and women like me (I mean similar age and social profile) exchanging addresses, phone numbers, and laughter at these carnival-like spaces within minutes of meeting each other for the first time.

Which ecommerce website lets you do that in India? I mean, come on, you know how sanitized Amazon, Flipkart, and Snapdeal are.

The answer lies in online flea market app Yappily, which lets a buyer and seller interact and transact in 10 seconds literally. Over 17,000 users are doing that already.

“Talk, chat, discuss, debate, love, like, hate, review, learn, rejoice, make friends who shop, find experts, find opinionators, choose to agree or disagree with what is being sold, how it is being sold, how it is made, delivered, paid for or serviced. Ask for personalization, bargain.” That is how young co-founder Kamonasish Aayush Mazumdar describes his app.

The Yappily founders.

The management graduate has co-founders in technology graduates Rohit Kumar and Rashmi Ranjan Padhy. When they came up with Yappily this year, they had a clear idea in mind. Their Bangalore-based startup would have to help in the discovery and curation of products which are otherwise difficult to find, provide a platform for new as well as pre-loved products, build a social network of “good” people, and make it work both offline and online.

That may sound a bit like consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplace Carousell, but the Singapore-based startup is yet to set foot in India. It recently raised US$35 million in funding from marquee investors, including Sequoia India. But so far, apart from saying that it is looking at new markets that are mobile-first and internet savvy, it hasn’t announced any move India-ward.

Yappily has confidently seized the space with over 1,200 unique sellers – both online and offline – and more than 500,000 products on board.

Amazon versus emotions

The founders like to call it ‘India’s first social aided ecommerce startup’ – a concept they say is staring at a US$100 billion market in five years in India alone. You could say it’s a social network for shopping.

Photo credit: Prayitno.

A community doesn’t cheat people