CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Navin Joshua, Founder and Director, GreenHonchos.
- Give an overview of the company and its specifications.
GreenHonchos is a full-stack D2C enabler offering technology, digital and operational solutions for scaling D2C brands online. In this increasingly digital-first world, customer demands are burgeoning each day, especially post-pandemic, but there is a dearth of quality supply from the enablement space. Brands are encountering an urgent need to set up shop online and scale quickly. They are confronted with making the right decisions about the platform, the technology stack, the marketing channels, and the business leakages that brands should be insulated against. That’s where GreenHonchos comes in as a one-stop platform offering end-to-end Consulting, Tech and Digitally-enabled commerce solutions. We provide brands with full-stack offerings across multiple cart solutions with our own enterprise-grade cart – KartmaX and other mainstream platforms like Shopify and Magento.
- How does the digitization of retail brands help in the economic growth of the country?
We know how rising smartphone adoption with highly available data at low costs and the pandemic are all pushing Indian consumers to think, do, and be completely digital. Today, over half of adults living in metro cities of India discover products and brands via social media. Affordability, accessibility, discounts, and features like cash-on-delivery to buying now and paying later will continue to drive online retail in India. The industry is expected to reach US$ 110 billion by 2025 from US$ 46 billion in 2020. This double-digit growth rate demonstrates how quickly the Indian economy will evolve, with the digitisation of retail brands being at the heart of this evolution.
- What are the challenges that the D2C industry is facing today? Mention a few major Roadblocks.
The fact that technology stack is very fragmented so deciding to choose the right tech stack for their business depends on what they are as a brand and which phase of growth they are in. One of the largest challenges is when digitalisation comes, the technological stack becomes critical. Brands mostly are not very tech savvy and based on where they are in their growth trajectory, a lot of options offering various solutions is the biggest challenge for them.
The other is the customer acquisition side which every business wants in order to scale and grow. Now, the channels of advertising and continuous volatility in the cost of advertising, and cost of acquisition makes it a little unpredictable in terms of their projection to scale. Moreover, the channels keep changing and their effectiveness keeps changing. In a digital landscape, you need a full-service digital view to be able to figure out your most effective channel of marketing to keep your cost of customer acquisition under control.
And the third challenge is the overall profitability of the business in terms of economics because the real challenge starts in India once the order is placed. After securing gross revenue, there is a big leakage in the net revenue due to multiple factors in the India domain, which is like last-mile logistics being a challenge and also cash on delivery is an issue. So there is a lot of leakage in the last mile. Hence, even though gross revenue is good, net revenue and profitability in business and its predictability are one of the key challenges for retail brands to grow online.
- How are you different from other players in the same domain?
Our technology capabilities, along with our full-stack e-commerce offerings, a decade-long industry experience, and our in-house eCommerce platform, KartmaX, set us apart from our competition. Our customized marketing approach and data-led initiatives are instrumental in helping brands scale in the D2C e-commerce landscape. KartmaX helps brands overcome the challenges faced by other mainstream platforms and the scalability concerns through its service-oriented architecture. Our technology and operational solutions provide brands with a consulting framework to launch seamlessly and deliver an engaging e-commerce experience.
- Share any of your case studies where physical or omnichannel techniques helped a brand to grow exponentially.
I would like to share the story of TCNS clothing since it has been our client for 5 years. It’s a house of brands with established and reputed brands like W, Aurelia, and more. We partnered with them when the brand was larger than many of its other competitors across categories in the offline space and they were facing challenges of scale in even 2015-16. It was a time when the D2C enablement ecosystem was not as democratized as it is today. We solved a lot of their technology challenges, including very large catalogs, speed and performance issues on their website on the open source tech stack that they had at that time, and we slowly but surely utilised each of the KartmaX modules every 6 months one by one with a very slow release because of the live installation. That was when the idea of KartmaX was born where it was 7-8 loosely coupled modules which were seamlessly swapped with open source and eventually all modules were put together to form the KartmaX over time. We have gone through massive initiatives like surveys and exciting Omnichannel initiatives that were picked up in terms of the product journey and roadmap, and they have been able to hit a tremendous amount of scale seamlessly on the platform for leading eRetail brands in India.
- Any tips that you would give to all digital-first brands?
In my opinion, for the digital-first business, the barrier to entry is very low and it’s much easier to set up a point of sale to be able to test market your product online, unlike offline. So definitely, it’s a great test field. But the hard yards are very similar to an offline business where the customer and product proposition vary over time. Also, its awareness and reach are different ball games to start with. It’s an easier thing to start because of the low barrier to entry, but its sustainability and scaling is a different ball game with as much hard yard to cover and focus required. Yes, in the digital space, there are data insights and analytics to back you at every step of the way, so those who can get the tech stack right and the visibility right of its numbers and drivers of business by keeping a sharp focus on the product, placement and price those will tend to be differentiated.
- Can you share revenues for last year and this year so far? If not, then please share the % growth of last and this year.
In the last two years, we have seen a 200% growth. It’s moderate growth and we have been growing year by year since 2018. It was completely organic, through word of mouth and building capability stack through design. We now have a team of 200+ eCommerce experts in Delhi NCR. We also have a presence in Bangalore with the leadership team and Mumbai with an account management team. We now have a client from the GCC market and are looking to grow in ASEAN markets as well. A lot of our clients are already strong in these markets and we are also making acquisitions there, especially with our tech stack i.e. gaining a lot of acceptability. So yes, growth and aggression are there, especially since we have invested the last 24 months aligned to growth only. We have generated 10 billion dollars in revenue for our clients. We have increased our clients from 100 to 150 clients now. This year, we achieved a milestone of generating 2cr to 3cr revenue for one of our clients within 24 hours through our platform Kartmax.
- How many brands are you associated with? Can you name a few?
So far, we have partnered with 150 brands in the mid-market segment. By the year-end, we
aim to work with over 250 brands and businesses in the eRetail space, where tech will be a
crucial area for investment and growth in terms of platform and solutions. Additionally, we
will heavily invest in content to commerce journey to partner with brands and widen
our marketing channels to include affiliate and influencer marketing. We have worked with all
the brands of TCNS Clothing, including W and Aurelia. Some of our other brands include Forever New, Zink London, Snitch, House of Stori, V2 Retail, Metro Shoes and Liberty.
