The Shopmatic founders. From L to R: Kris Chen, Yen Lim, Anurag Avula.
When you click the “buy” button on an ecommerce site, there’s a lot that you take for granted. It’s assumed that the seller has that item in stock; that they have a delivery company on call; that the money you send will, you know, get to them.
But if you’re a small brick-and-mortar merchant looking to get your feet wet with this whole “internet” thing, setting up the necessary infrastructure can be an intimidating and confusing mess.
At least, that’s what Anurag Avula, Yen Lim, and Kris Chen found out while they were managing swaths of business at PayPal in Asia. The trio kept hearing the same things from entrepreneurs and small business owners – that people wanted to bring their brands online, but were scared away by the expense, complexity, and abstractness of the whole thing.
“When talking to potential PayPal users, they would say, ‘You come to us with a payments solution, but what about the rest? How can I use a payments solution if I don’t have a [digital] storefront or shipping?’” Anurag told Tech in Asia at last week’s Rise conference in Hong Kong. That’s when they got the idea for Shopmatic.
One-click
The goal of Shopmatic is to idiot-proof the process of bringing your company online. The service automatically creates a customizable website for a company, and can promote your products on sites like Facebook and Twitter. It also lists a user’s goods on platforms like eBay, Amazon, Flipkart, and Lazada, depending on the region.
Shopmatic includes built-in analytics and inventory management tools, and supports payment options like PayPal and cash on delivery. The company partners with local logistics and shipping companies, and integrates their offerings with the platform.
A user clicks the ‘enable shipping’ button. It’s all automated.
“A user clicks the ‘enable shipping’ button. It’s all automated,” says Anurag. “A guy will just come and pick it up.”
The biggest hurdle on the user’s side is to take pictures of the goods they want to sell (no small feat, by the way – taking good pics can make or break an ecommerce setup) and then the Shopmatic system takes it from there.
“We were talking about ecommerce every day [at Paypal], and we were wondering why nobody was fixing this,” says Yen. “There are so few players in that space. It’s so complex and there are so many fragmented pieces, and it’s regional, and you’ve got so many cultural pieces thrown in as well.”
But why tho
In a world saturated by platforms like Amazon, Alibaba, and Lazada, it seems like a bold move for a peppy startup to throw stones at the giants.
Photo credit: gato gato gato.
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