The e-commerce play is getting exciting every passing day as next-gen players are constantly innovating to grab a bigger size of the market.

Just Dial has launched a new app ‘JD’ that will help consumers buy anything they like through the click of a button.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Just Dial founder CEO VSS Mani said the company is working on a technology which will enable people to use verbal commands to get things done at the speed of thought.

Just Dial’s new app JD is going to be a platform where you can search and compare different prices but it is not going to be a marketplace model. Can you help us understand the thinking behind that?

It is already partially a marketplace and in the coming months you will see a complete market place wherein you can find anything and everything you would need. Wherever it makes sense, there will be price comparison for you and wherever it makes sense you can just click — with one click, one tap, you can just buy things and get the gratification of the delivery getting done within 30-45 minutes.

You will see a lot of stuff taking place this week and you must download our Android app and check it out.

It has got cool voice search capability and it caters to every different accent, the flavours of Indian States, and you can try that. You will be mighty pleased with the product we have.

I have been reading reports which suggest that you could also perhaps look at regional languages. How much of your growth do you really think will come in the form a language that is outside of English?

We are right now working on a voice search capability for vernacular languages.

We will not so much focus in terms of displaying it in vernacular languages but we feel that India is a very large country where varied types of people are there and we all love to talk, we all love to get things done if possible by talking to a system.

So we are building a technology that in the next 9-10 months you should see us launch at least in a couple of languages where people could just command and get things done, at the speed of thought.

I can tell you that much. Not just searching it or finding it but actually transacting it and getting your job done.

Very interesting things happening for Just Dial. You have two payment options for your SME client — one-time pay option with a five-year discount component, and a ₹20,000 one-time fee with fee upgrades and all of that. What is the kind of subscriber base that you are looking at for FY17? And how much do you think that — at your target pace — will add to your profit and loss?

We should definitely do upwards of 30,000-40,000.

It is very difficult to predict something like that right now as far as number of people who can subscribe is concerned, because it is all a factor of number of people you demonstrate your product — it is a show and tell product.

So it all depends on lots of those actions.

As far as customer acceptance is concerned, that has been phenomenal, that is better than any other product that we have had till date.

That is like the need of the hour.

They say we love this. What happens in the JD Omni business gets its own website with e-commerce capability, with payment gateway integration.

You do not have to deal with anybody. Over and above that you have your own app. You have your own inventory management system in place.

We have customer credits managed efficiently.

Apart from that you have a dashboard on your cell-phone, where you can see by the minute the information of what is the progress in your business, what is the revenue you made, what is the profit you made and much more.

So there are multiple outlets in one dashboard.

There’s a simple monthly rental of ₹2,000.

It is easy to use and anybody can use it — that is the difference.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW