E-world's new terms of engagement with you

CHENNAI: Whenever Jafer Khan, a 22-year-old student in Chennai, runs low on money for mobile data, he sends his two cents' worth to the country's largest e-commerce firms. He makes a quick buck filling surveys on which mobile application introductions failed to convince him or by reviewing new app features.
Khan may not know it but he is essential to the mobile strategies of online marketplaces, which onboard people like him through tech startups for a raft of services such as feedback on demand and Big Data-driven push notifications that nudge cart-abandoning consumers to complete their purchases.
At least half a dozen ventures have emerged around the estimated Rs 94,500-crore ($15 billion) Indian e-commerce industry, capitalizing on its bid to fuel transactions on mobile phones and reduce app uninstalls and find ways to push consumerism as the small screen becomes the dominant portal for online shopping.
Airloyal, which runs customer engagement for e-retailers with its nearly 70 lakh users including Khan, helped ShopClues retain more of its app users. "By running interesting surveys about a retention campaign, we were able to help increase their usual retention by over 50%," said Raja Hussain, founder and CEO of Airloyal, which has earned Rs 30 crore in revenue in its first year of business.
Startups like Airloyal are finding purchase from Flipkart, the largest home-grown rival to Amazon, as well as newer online marketplaces such as Yepme, BigBasket and Paytm to make mobile app users buy more, and buy regularly.
Online marketplaces battle a disadvantage against traditional retail in the absence of a salesperson to direct consumers in two minds about a purchase, which has turned out to be a strong business case for mobile tech startups.
Moengage, launched a year ago, leverages Big Data to garner customer information from social media to create distinct user profiles. E-commerce firms create offers based on specific enquiries to convert abandonments into purchases.
"So far, our tools have helped one of India's largest e-commerce companies convert 8% of stalled purchases into revenue," said Raviteja Dodda, co-founder and CEO. Moengage, which works with Snapdeal, ShopClues, Yepme and Big Basket among others, saw its June revenue grow 30% month-on-month, a year after starting up.
Snapdeal will work with any service provider that will increase app downloads through contextually relevant placements, said Anirudh Kumar, assistant vice president-online marketing at the electronic marketplace that actively nurtures this ecosystem.
E-commerce firms are also engaging startups that make software than can plug into their apps to run referrals, contests to unlock inventory, or get users to make recommendations in return for a gift voucher.
AppVirality, which works with Yatra, Quickr, MakeMyTrip, creates plugin software for contests that entail spreading the word on an app. "The new normal is to get your 5-10 million user base to do the job of spreading the message to complement digital advertising," said Laxman Papineni, the 27-year-old founder and CEO of the company.
"On an average, nearly two-thirds of (online) transaction traffic has moved to mobile e-commerce, but there is a challenge there," said Pragya Singh, vice president at market research firm Technopak.
"Compared to a laptop or a desktop PC, the mobile phone has a limitation in the number of applications it can run, making it a fierce game among e-commerce firms to (be) the preferred app."
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