https://youtu.be/RiinwySqNUo

DASAR Podcast | D2C Brands | Shoptimize: Scaling Indian Brands into the Big League | Mangesh Panditrao | SaaS + Services |

Transcript 

 

Darshan Doshi: Welcome to DASAR. My name is Darshan Doshi. And in this D2C series I have a very interesting guest today Mangesh Panditrao. Mangesh Panditrao is the co-founder of Shoptimize. Shoptimize is a SaaS platform from Pune that helps brands go online by providing e-commerce as a service. He has some incredible brands, such as Harldirams' which he's taken online.

And we are going to break down all things D2C, which includes,  e-commerce as a service. What does it really mean? How do brands that have been present for decades?  How do they view the online,  presence that is needed and also selling through e-commerce? So thank you Mangesh for joining DASAR.

Mangesh: Thank you so much for having me here. 

Darshan: So Mangesh I have given a quick overview of who you are.   But when someone comes up to you and says, you know who is Mangesh, what do you typically say?

Mangesh Panditrao: If I think about it, I think if I were to answer that question, I mean, I'm just somebody who,  I guess works really hard,  and,  wants to make a difference, I guess, in whichever way possible that's probably the easiest answer I could give, of course, I am an entrepreneur, I am a family guy, and from Pune lived abroad, and come back and try and to make a difference from here now.

Darshan Doshi: Incredible. Thank you.  We're going to talk about consumer brands, brands like Haldirams' which have been present for decades. whose sweets we have eaten and, grown up and now suddenly with the advent of, social media, Instagram, Amazon,  internet penetrating the masses, even in India, roughly 615 million Indians are online today, we have  120 million shoppers shopping online today. So,  you've worked with a lot of brands that have been in our lives for a very long time to take them online through e-commerce services, but just help me understand, how do you take these consumer brands online? What does it involve?

Mangesh Panditrao: Yeah,  so this is an area where we have also learned along the way So when we started, the simple thing that we wanted to do is provide a platform that could take websites online and started with a simple vision like that. And then you realize what the gaps. are, what are, the opportunities,  what the risks are, and we've kept building around them to come where we are. . So, you mentioned how you,  getting to see story about how he started working at Haldiram's. I remember that time we were just starting and we had some customers in Pune who said that he is having problems with his mobile website.  So his website was built-in flash.  He just got his new iPhone and clearly, that website was not opening. So, what can you do about this? I said we can do a lot more on the website than opening on iPhone . I am coming to Nagpur. So, I flew to Nagpur , I met him and said let's fix this. But, how about selling through your website? That's,  how we started.  He and everyone in his team also, their typical answer was a 35 rupees packet and 50 rupees shipping won't work, We said, you leave that to us, and we'll figure out how to make this happen.  You just pay us a piece of the money you make. And that's kind of how  Haldiram's e-commerce started its a multi-million dollar business now. So the start was very humble, thanks to the website developed on flash and the owner buying an iPhone. So that's how we started and that's how the early days in e-commerce were in India yet in certain cases is there's a lot more awareness and a lot more seriousness about this channel and we don't have to convince, people anymore. it is more about how do we make this happen to them? So you asked me a bit about how does this journey happens?  So I am going to talk genera