India's largest online retail firm Flipkart has launched a new brand called 'Billion'— which is likely to leverage the 'Make in India' initiative. The platform will cater to customers across categories such as home appliances and fashion.
Billion will be a private label from the Flipkart stable which Sachin Bansal, co-founder and executive chairman of Flipkart said, will be made for India and made in India. "There are few products or brands which have been innovated keeping in mind the core Indian masses and that was the genesis for Billion," Bansal told The Times of India during an interaction.
Make in India and Make for India
Bansal said with 100 percent Indian manufacturing, Flipkart was in line with the government's 'Make in India' initiative. Bansal said their research had shown a high level of dissatisfaction that existed among consumers despite a plethora of products being already present in the market.
The central idea behind the brand is to offer products designed specifically for Indian shoppers, who Bansal thinks are not served satisfactorily by most of the existing brands across product categories, Mint reported.
Flipkart has started co-creating products in partnership with domestic manufacturers, to push its new brand 'Billion' as a made-in-India option for its users, The Economic Times reported.
The process to launch Billion started a year ago, when Flipkart put together a team for research on customer data, and few products have already been tested on the platform over recent weeks. "What we found is that the Indian consumers are value conscious and want more out of a product in terms of features," Bansal told ET.
Competition in Indian E-commerce space
The launch of the brand comes at a time when both Flipkart and rival Amazon are pushing hard to expand India's online retail consumption base and bring in millions of people into the e-tailing universe. While Amazon has been diversifying its line of offerings with the launch of its membership programme Prime and focusing on content, food and grocery, Flipkart is stressing on bringing in localised innovations which cater to Indian needs of the masses, TOI reported.
The initiative is also Flipkart's efforts to increase sales of private label products, which offer higher margins to online retailers than those sold by third-party brands.
Flipkart is positioning the brand as a value-for-money offering, indicating that it will be a budget brand. The name Billion is a favourite of Bansal's — the company's flagship sale event goes as Big Billion Days.
Why Billion?
In an interview to Mint, Bansal said, "The name (Billion) is pretty interesting because, among all the other options that we had, this one stands for basically a billion aspirations for a billion people, which is exactly what we're trying to do. We're basically trying to understand the aspirations and needs of every Indian and we're going to create products that meet those needs in the best possible manner. That's the objective and the name kind of resonated."
Bansal is likely to lead a 40-member team for Billion that includes sourcing executives, marketing managers, engineers and product experts.
However, industry experts are skeptical of Flipkart's latest private brand after the e-commerce company had less than successful attempts with brands like Flippd and DigiFlip. "Flipkart has tried several times to create a private brand for different categories," Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail consultancy firm Technopak told ET.
