In an exclusive interview with SME Times, Siddharth Nambiar, Co-Founder and Managing Director, OfficeYes.com said they offer small and medium enterprises (SMEs) essential office supplies at cost-effective prices for helping them to meet their business needs.  

                                                                                                 Excerpts of the interview...

What kind of products do you offer customers who want to start a new business?
Siddharth Nambiar: I wouldn't say that we focus especially on products for customers who want to start a new business, rather we try to cover every conceivable angle for the stationery and supplies needs of businesses--be they small startups, large blue chips or anything in between. However, we do have a nice range of combo offers that might suit people who have just set up. For example,  our 'Office Essentials' package contains 10 essential items that are required by most businesses. So, a couple of orders of these would be a good, convenient option for any new startup. We serve a wide range of companies from GE and Microsoft to startup-dotcoms and retailers.

Small business usually cannot invest much on the infrastructure. So, in that case how do attract them to purchase the products for their use?
Siddharth Nambiar: One word: price. I agree that most startups can't invest in expensive infrastructure, but what we are offering at OfficeYes.com is a range of every conceivable product that a business might need, from the bare essentials of core stationery and supplies, right up to the fancier stuff. So, we see plenty of orders from small startups which need office essentials at great prices. And to be honest, as a business man I don't think I would want to be investing in a startup that is splurging on expensive infrastructure at the outset. Let the small businesses grow in size before they start investing in iPads for each employee! So, regardless of the level of sophistication of the needs we can provide solutions.  

Do you have any competitor in this field of business?
Siddharth Nambiar: There are a few established offline vendors-- MNCs that have done joint ventures with Indian companies. They are established names in this industry and they are who we see as our main competitors. In terms of the online space there are a few other small players, but we are by far the largest player--5x bigger than our next rival.

This is a unique concept to purchase products online just with a click of a mouse. Are customers feeling your services trustworthy as they cannot feel the objects you are offering?
Siddharth Nambiar: Early funders of Amazon were probably asking themselves this same question as they lay awake night worrying about their investment...and look how that turned out! E-commerce has changed the way people buy, and with  Flipkart and Jabong now household names in India, people are clearly now comfortable with buying things they can't first touch and feel. Of course some people will resist adoption, but with 75% of Indian Internet users being in the 15-34 age bracket the trend will only move in one direction--greater and greater adoption of e-commerce. But you're absolutely correct--trust is an incredibly important factor in e-commerce. That's why are investing big in setting up a truly world class logistics arm, with rapid delivery, and the highest customer service levels. So far we are doing a great job, but we are always looking for ways to innovate, and serve our customers even better.  

What is your marketing strategy to promote Officeyes.com?
Siddharth Nambiar: We have avoided the 'spray and pray' approach. The essence of our marketing approach is the following: try something, capturing high quality data, crunch the numbers, do the hard analysis, keep what works and throw out what doesn't. Through this approach we have been able to develop a multi-channel marketing strategy where we are acquiring profitable customers with high CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) as opposed to those who are less profitable.

How are you making SMEs aware about your services?
Siddharth Nambiar: As discussed above, we have a multi-channel approach. We have optimized our online marketing to a point where it is delivering a variety of profitable customers. In addition to that we are doing our best to position ourselves as an organization that understands what businesses large and small need--through a combination of the products we offer, and our marketing and PR. If SMEs don't yet know about us we hope they soon will!  

What are your business plans as of now and please highlight on the kind of clientele you are dealing with?
Siddharth Nambiar: We serve a wide range of customers, almost entirely businesses, from SMEs to large blue chips. Our plans are to continue to acquire customers who are profitable, whether they're small startups or large organisations. In addition, we want to truly define this market. As I mentioned before our marketing is based on experimentation and rigorous data analysis. This same culture of innovation is present across all of our functional areas. In procurement, for example, we want to anticipate the needs of businesses and have the products that they need available on our website, before they even know they need them!

How do you observe the growth of retail online penetration in India?
Siddharth Nambiar: The trend will only go in one direction--up! Internet penetration is growing year on year, and while this growth rate does not automatically correlate with the growth rate of people buying things online, every study reports increasing levels of e-commerce adoption in India, with bigger and bigger projections on growth rates. But a very interesting aspect of this story, and one that directly relates to our business model, is the difference in market potential between e-commerce for businesses, and e-commerce for the consumer. The US, e-commerce for business dwarfs B2C, by a factor of 10. When this same trend moves over to India as we believe it will eventually, we will see Indian business adopt e-commerce solutions more and more. When that happens, we want OfficeYes.com to be at the apex of this market. Finally, when you look at the demographics, the figures are even more encouraging. India's overwhelmingly young Internet population means today's web-savvy teenagers and young adults who are busy documenting their lives on Facebook, will be tomorrow's business managers / admin buyers. So, it's clear to us that the growth potential for our business model is infinite!

(Namrata Kath Hazarika can be contacted at namratakh@tradeindia.com)