The advent of e-commerce has made shopping easier than ever. People can check products off their wishlist with a tap on their devices, but sometimes the process isn’t as easy as it seems. According to a study, more than 60 percent of carts and 90 percent of checkouts are abandoned due to customers changing their minds.
The main reason for customers changing their minds is the amount of time taken in the checkout process, and Xpresslane has been working constantly towards solving this challenge. Founded by Ashwin Koorakula and Madhukar Reddimasi, Xpresslane’s 2.4 second page load time and single-click solution reduce friction in the checkout process by providing customers with a premium experience.
Making online shopping easier
After facing challenges with faster checkout options as the Head of Payment Systems at Jabong and ClearTrip, Ashwin realised that there needed to be a better solution to the problem in order to facilitate quicker transactions. He observed that the people around him had to refill their information in order to make purchases, which made them abandon their cart more often than not.
Madhukar, on the other hand, is an Xpresslane-proclaimed tech wizard, who has the experience of working as a Solution Architect at i2 Technologies, and as a Senior Product Specialist at JDA Software. Ashwin adds that they came to know each other via a mutual friend, and started working on the idea together.
Ashwin observed a lot of things during his stint with Jabong and ClearTrip, and he was consulting with e-commerce companies about his observations. “As I talked to more merchants, I realised that everyone wants to solve the challenges around checkouts and payments, but there was no solution in the market that was solving this,” he says.
He says that the eureka moment hit him when he was shopping online and wanted to make a quick purchase, but when he landed on the checkout page, he had to fill out so many details that he gave up on the transaction. This gave him the idea to start a single-click checkout platform, which would require the users to fill out their details to facilitate quicker checkout across various platforms.
Even though the system of a single-click checkout wasn’t accepted by merchants openly in the initial stages, Ashwin says that they solved this challenge by providing them with a free trial to experience the boost in sales that came with their product. Several others raised questions regarding the security of data, and Ashwin says that with compliance to PCI DSS Level 1, they are able to show proper data audits to ensure that their merchants feel safe.
Unifying the checkout process
Ashwin says that their aim is to unify the checkout process across all verticals so that if there’s one checkout profile for a user, they can use it across multiple e-commerce platforms. He adds that they are more focused on the D2C space presently, where they can provide more value to the merchants, improve their conversion rates, and give users a seamless experience of the checkout process.
While the faster checkout experience increases the happiness level of the customer base, it also has a direct impact on Key Performance Indicators that greatly benefit the merchants. The smooth checkout process ensures that users are able to place incentivised prepaid orders, thus driving up the prepaid sales for the merchants. The speed of the checkout also helps merchants convert impulse buys quicker and ensures higher retention rates.
Ashwin mentions that as they talked to more merchants, they started identifying certain problem areas that hampered the speed of the checkout process. He adds that they are working towards ensuring that users opted for prepaid orders over cash on delivery. Once brands started realising what Xpresslane was doing, they started approaching them for solutions to explore how they were converting impulse purchases.
The product, which is built on a minute study of consumer behavior, is efficient and Ashwin says that reducing the friction to convert a cart into a sale/purchase and making the shopping experience more enjoyable became their key growth drivers.
Staying true to Digital India
Ashwin says that all tech products need to have a digital presence, and the key rationale for them to have a website of their own is to be able to create a digital identity by showcasing what their technology is capable of. They also needed data capture points for prospective clients, and their landing pages helped them achieve that.
Talking about choosing the .in domain for the website, Ashwin says that as a bootstrapped startup, the decision was pretty straightforward for them. He says that while choosing a domain, they noticed that a .in domain cost 100 times less than other traditional domains, which was delightful for Xpresslane.
The .in domain, managed by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) has helped several such startups like Xpresslane make their mark in the various online verticals. Available in 22 different Indian languages, the .in and .Bharat domains have helped startups show that they’re devoted to catering to the needs of the Indian people.
Ashwin adds that since they were targeting the Indian market, going for an expensive .com domain didn’t make any sense. “Also, there was already a lot of adoption of the .in domain in the market, and it was popularised by brands like RedBus and Freecharge, so we didn’t face any resistance from the users as to why we were using the domain,” says Ashwin.
Speaking about the future of the startup, Ashwin says that their end goal is to become a part of every single transaction across different domains, and they’re developing their product accordingly to achieve that. He adds that the beauty of Xpresslane lies in its universality rather than its speed and that they aim to enable users to create an entire e-commerce profile based on their online transactions.
The ‘Shaping India Inc’s Online Growth’ series chronicles the journeys of startups and SMEs in India and how creating an online presence on the .in or .Bharat domain powered their success stories.
