Coutloot, a social e-commerce platform, stated it had enabled over 6 lakh small street shops and sellers to extend their business online for a year, raising their income by seven times.
The company, built on the lines of Taobao, declared an average seller earns Rs 16,000 on the platform every month compared to Rs 2,300 at the start of the pandemic in 2020. During the lockdown, many traditional market sellers could not keep up with the events. Still, Coutloot was competent to onboard more than 3 lakh sellers during the beginning of the lockdown.
"We aim to expand and evolve the platform for the betterment of the sellers as well as buyers. The team has been customizing the app for our users who are not tech-savvy. We are overcoming such challenges with new updates in the app that have experienced a great response. We currently have over 10 million app downloads and are in the top 20 shopping apps in the country by play store ranking," Jasmeet Thind, co-founder of Coutloot, said. "The new chat translation and auto-bargain features have helped the local sellers scale up the sales. We made something that even a kid can use'"
Coutloot, which boosted around $8 million from Ameba Capital, 9Unicorns, and Astarc Ventures, has more than 6.5 lakh sellers on its platform and anticipates reaching 3 million by the end of 2022.
Founded by Thind and Mahima Kaul, Coutloot is a platform that allows buyers and sellers to bargain while shopping. It allows sellers to list non-MRP (non-fixed-price), unbranded local market products across fashion, electronics, home decor, sports and other boxed categories that account for three-fourths of India's retail market.
By 2022, the platform foresees a GMV of Rs 1000 crore on the rising demand from smaller towns. The products sold on Coutloot are native and don't even sustain an MRP tag.
"I used to sell only offline earlier and some small online platforms, but ever since I have onboarded my store on Coutloot, my income has grown multi-folds. I am getting queries from all across the country and have to increase the workforce to cater to the rise in demand for my products," Afzal Zubair, owner of Dua Craft from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, spoke.
CoutLoot has recently launched a B2B side of the business, uniting its sellers to factories to source products at low prices. It is also experimenting with a video story feature, reverberating out soon, where sellers can articulate about their stores.
