According to IBEF, India ecommerce will reach $99 billion by 2024, growing at a 27 percent CAGR over 2019-2024. In the last quarter of 2020, the order volume increased by 36 percent. In fact, Tier II and III cities accounted for 90 percent yearly incremental volume and value growth in the segment in the quarter.
However, with increasing demand and competition, many ecommerce companies are struggling to meet the shortest possible delivery timelines.
This is where Eshopbox comes in. Founded in 2016 by cousins Ankush Karwa and Mayur Karwa, the Gurugram-based third-party logistics (3PL) startup helps brands and retailers to explore multichannel commerce with its fulfilment infrastructure and technology platform.
“We want to give the power to any company anywhere to create a brand they are passionate about to be able to serve and treat their customers the way they would want to be treated,” says Ankush Karwa, CEO and Co-founder, Eshopbox.
Founders (L-R): Ankush Karwa and Mayur Karwa
“Just like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud have eliminated the need to maintain physical servers, we aim to eliminate the need to maintain physical warehouses for brands and retailers,” Ankush adds.
The B2B SaaS startup provides a one-stop solution for all ecommerce operations to its clients with its tech-enabled fulfilment, storing, order processing, return management, last-mile shipping, payment reconciliation, and tools to maintain control over inventory, orders, and shipments.
It serves companies across categories, including fashion, beauty, health, electronics, and home, which includes popular brands like Raymonds, W, Blackberrys, Royal Enfield, Spykar, Being Human, Clarks, ASICS, Pureplay Cosmetics, Oziva, and many more.
Eshopbox has FCs in Gurugram (45,000 sq ft), Mumbai (45,000 sq ft), and Bengaluru (20,000 sq ft). Ankush says the startup will be introducing more locations by the end of 2021.
“Each of our fulfilment centres is built with state-of-the-art modern infrastructure and automation to be fast, efficient, secure, reliable, and affordable,” says Co-founder and Director Mayur Karwa.
The inception
IIT-Bombay alumnus Ankush and Mayur — a lawyer by degree from ILS Law College, Pune — had launched a D2C ecommerce brand Factory Rush in 2014 — a platform that allowed customers to shop products directly from leading factories from around the globe.
They realised that although there were multiple logistics companies offering fulfilment services, they neither had the technology nor the process knowledge to meet the consumer expectations, especially for ecommerce needs.
“This is when we decided to start Eshopbox as a tech-enabled fulfilment company on a mission to enable brands and retailers to offer an Amazon-like customer experience,” the duo says.
Eshopbox has a team of 100 employees and about 1,000 associates working across all its fulfilment centres.
The mission
Eshopbox handles the heavy lifting operations, allowing brands, retailers, and D2C companies to focus on their core business.
“First, we help them determine their optimal inventory placement across our fulfilment centres and fulfil marketplace and shopping cart orders. Second, from managing inventory, order updates, and up-to-date payment insights, our app puts everything in one place. Moreover, the brand can take control, be efficient, and embrace transparency in their business operations,” Mayur says.
To improve this, Ehopbox offers:
Merchant experience: A suite of tools for back-office operations, reporting and analytics needs, and managing inventory movement within its fulfilment networks. The same tools are directly integrated with multiple platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, and Shopify, which helps them get badges like Amazon Prime, Flipkart Assured.
Fulfilment experience: A process management tool used by retailers at fulfilment centres, which allows the startup to build, customise, and roll out changes easily with the no-code workflow builder, creating a logistics experience for end consumers with end-to-end visibility throughout the delivery journey.
Customer experience: Eshopbox is constantly improving the end customer experience with offerings like one-day delivery promises, hand to hand exchanges, and easy returns.
In fact, it is innovating its warehouse technology with strong order routing, scheduling, and AI-based courier recommendation engine, along with language controls to improve efficiency for warehouse operators.
Eshopbox charges a monthly subscription fee to use its fulfilment centres and tech platform. It charges a fulfilment fee per order, which includes the cost of pick up, packing, and shipping to customers, and lastly, a storage fee, calculated daily based on the inventory space occupied at the centre.
“Our charges depend on multiple factors like the category of business, order processing volume, etc. We charge a monthly subscription fee of Rs 15,000, which includes access to multiple warehouses, access to Amazon Prime, and Flipkart Assured badges, listing across multiple channels, etc. Our fulfilment fee is about Rs 10 per unit, depending on the above-mentioned factors,” says Ankush.
Bootstrapped since inception, the startup is clocking an annual recurring revenue (ARR) upwards of $3 million.
“We plan to double the same by the end of next financial year. We have been growing at 100 percent yearly since the last three years,” says Ankush.
Moving forward
Mayur says of the $200 billion ecommerce market, the D2C ecommerce market is expected to reach $100 billion by 2026. “Any merchant who is directly selling to consumers digitally is a target market for us,” he adds.
According to Ankush, due to the democratisation of distribution, they expect there will be more Rs 1,000 crore brands than Rs 50,000 crore conglomerates in the future. And, such brands will need to outsource their D2C fulfilment operations due to economies of scale.
“Even the larger companies will either need to rethink their logistics to cater to consumer expectations or work with fulfilment experts like us,” he adds.
With three fulfilment centres, Eshopbox has a storage capacity of two million cubic feet and a processing capacity of 50,000 orders daily. The startup can deliver about 47 percent of orders within two days.
Eshopbox plans to onboard many new-age brands across health and beauty, consumer electronics, and home categories in 2021.
“We will continue to invest in our merchant-facing software, increasing the number of integrations with ecommerce platforms, expanding delivery networks by adding more courier partners, accounting and ERP software to automate the back-end office operations for our clients,” Mayur says.
He adds, “We will also heavily invest in the warehouse management system and automation, which powers our fulfilment centres. Our key focus will also be to increase our fulfilment support team to enable more brands and retailers without sacrificing on service levels.”
Eshopbox competes with global companies like Shipbob and Deliverr, and WareIQ, Shiprocket, and Pickrr, among others, in India.
“Unlike many organisations, we add value from the top to the bottom of the supply chain. We don’t just broker the transactions, or only deliver the last mile; we own the entire fulfilment chain, including storage and warehousing solutions,” Ankush says.
