Flipkart WiRED 2020 | Campus Case Challenge

About Flipkart
Flipkart, which started operations in 2007 by selling books, is today the largest e-commerce player in
India — with approximately 250 million subscribers operating across 120+ major categories. With the
internet base expanding in India, Flipkart is eyeing this opportunity to come up with many new
initiatives to ensure top-of-the-mind brand recall for online shoppers. Customer First is one of the core
values at Flipkart since inception and here are some of the initiatives that the company has
experimented with to increase customer engagement and mindshare​:

2010 Cash-on-Delivery Service

2011 30 Day Replacement Policy

2012 Fashion & Lifestyle Category Launch

2013 Launched Marketplace & Same Day Delivery

2014 The First ‘Big Billion Day’ Sale

2015 Flipkart Lite - Mobile Focus

2016 No Cost EMI

Private Labels & Expanding Categories

2017 (Large Appliances, Furni-sure, Refurbished business)

2018 Grocery, Shopper Audience Platform (tie-up with Hotstar), Flipkart Plus

2019 Buy Now Pay Later, 2Gud, Supermart, Supercoins, Games, Travels

2020 Quick, 2GUD influencer commerce, Leap, Flipkart Wholesale

If you want to know more about the innovations by Flipkart visit

https://stories.flipkart.com/category/innovation/
Problem Statement
Context​:

Internet users in India today

~650Mn Indians are on the internet today, expected to reach ~700M by 2021 year end. This number is
expected to go up to ~1B by 2030, enabled by access to cheap data and affordable devices. However,
the face of the Indian internet user is rapidly changing, with # of rural internet users overtaking # urban
this year. There is expected to be a significant chunk of customers who are more comfortable exploring
the internet in their native language, and not English.

Today, ~90% of Indian internet users access the internet on their mobiles and spend 4-5 hours on an
average per day online. The biggest use case for most of them is keeping in touch with their circles
through chat apps, social media, consuming content (e.g. youtube, OTT platforms). Only a much smaller
portion of this user base are at the stage of financial transactions (e.g. bill payments) or product related
transactions (e-commerce)
Impact of COVID on user behavior​:

The lockdown saw the entire country come to a standstill, with only stores selling essentials allowed to
stay open. E-commerce companies also limited their offering to essential goods across groceries,
personal hygiene products, etc. From a user perspective, the lockdown also saw a serious spike in OTT
content consumption, both in terms of # of users and hours spent daily.

Coming out of the lockdown, there has been a significant shift in consumer behavior, with most people
reluctant to go out for their shopping. This is expected to lead to a faster shift of customers from offline
channels to online shopping.

Summary takeaways​:
● E-commerce constitutes less than 5%​ ​of overall retail in India and while so far being largely an
urban phenomenon, it is growing rapidly in tier 2 and beyond every year.
● Only ~1/3rd of Internet users shop online or do financial transactions, most of them confine
themselves to just messaging, social media or entertainment.
● Entertainment is fast catching up on social media to emerge as the primary category for internet
usage behind messaging in both Urban and Rural India.
● COVID saw a spike in online content consumption - both paid (Hotstar, Netflix, etc.) and free
(e.g. Youtube, Flipkart video)
● Change in consumer behavior due to COVID is expected to accelerate the shift of consumers
from offline to online channels

Flipkart at an inflection point​:

Flipkart’s mission is to democratize shopping for Bharat, and serving the next wave of users coming from
tier 2 and beyond is core to this mission.
Opportunity​: COVID is expected to result in an accelerated shift to e-commerce. Flipkart has the
opportunity to acquire and serve the next wave of customers.

Challenge​: Today most of these users are restricting themselves to content consumption, social media
and chat on the internet, and there are some important barriers preventing them from shopping online,
despite the inherent benefits of e-commerce holding true for them (e.g. access to a wide range of
products, great value, convenience).

Key Deliverables for Idea Brief Submission Round:

1. Given how COVID has impacted user behavior (increased content consumption, reluctance to go
outside to shop), what should Flipkart do to convert the content / social media consumers of
today to online shoppers of tomorro​w?

In not more than 3 slides (excluding cover & annexures), answer the following:
a. What are the barriers preventing these internet users from shopping online today?
b. What is the recommended model to solve this, given the Covid context?
c. Does Flipkart need to build more capabilities, features or invest in any of its existing
capabilities more, which can drive trials for Flipkart Commerce?

2. Video of not more than 3 mins explaining the rationale behind the ideas proposed. The video
should have all 3 team members.

Guidelines for the approach:

● Use a combination of global benchmarking, understanding of Indian customer landscape, secondary

and primary research to build your point of view
● Keep context and compatibility of Flipkart in mind while benchmarking with global companies.
● Fully understand Flipkart’s existing innovations for these customers, and factor in your
understanding in the recommendations being made
● Implementation timeline should not exceed 1-2 years
● Feasibility of the solution to be used even with company scaling up in future