The online marketplace, which offers same-day and next-day delivery services, feels the uptake is largely an urban phenomenon.
Snapdeal, one of India's largest online marketplace, said on Tuesday that it is interested to enter the rural markets in a big way through an assisted e-commerce model, and is actively assessing partnership opportunities in the logistics space.
"Rural is a big area of focus for us. The GoJavas partnership is working extremely well for us in terms of scaling up logistics for the last mile. Rural would be a huge untapped opportunity as there is no access there. The business model in rural is assisted e-commerce. We did the same with Fino last year," said Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO of Snapdeal.
Last year, Snapdeal inked a partnership with leading alternate delivery channel Fino PayTech to launch assisted e-commerce centres in semi-urban, rural and low income residential areas across the country. It plans to launch around 5,000 e-commerce kiosks across 65 cities and 70,000 rural areas within a targeted timeline of end 2015.
The company, which is owned by Jasper Infotech, also picked up minority stake in logistics firm GoJavas as it looks to further strengthen its delivery operations in the country. Both companies have signed a strategic agreement for last-mile delivery.
The online marketplace, which offers same-day and next-day delivery services, feels the uptake is largely an urban phenomenon.
"In the smaller towns and cities, people just want the product. They don't get access to products that are genuine, reliable and at the right price," he said. Around 75% of products sold on Snapdeal is mobile phones.
On going for more partnerships to tap the rural market, Bahl said, "We are assessing the opportunity right now. Rural is a very big area and as an e-commerce platform, we can solve the real needs of rural India because there is a lot of aspiration in rural, but no access. We can bridge that gap between demand and supply."
The company on Tuesday signed an agreement with Sidbi to offer easy and cost efficient financing to its sellers. The company has set an ambitious target of getting over 1 million sellers onboard its platform over the next three years to meet its aggressive sales targets.
"Our sellers don't have a demand constraint. They're supply constrained as they don't have cheap working capital available to them," he said.
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