What sells in online grocery category? Customers spend twice as much on cleaning toilet over teeth

We earlier profiled Zopnow, Bangalore based startup that is selling grocery online. Though the site is only a few months old, they have interesting data to share – especially with respect to buying behavior for online grocery category.

Here are some interesting observation Zopnow team has shared (emphasis:mine, humor:Birla, Zopnow cofounder):

- If you thought only Cinderella had an issue when clock stuck 12, think again. The time slot 12-1 is the most popular time slot for our customers to buy. Did I forget to add one minor detail, I am talking about afternoon here.

- 3 out of 4 customers come back within a month with a bigger order. As Schwarzenegger said – I am back.

- We have enough customers who buy SKUs in triple digits ( > 99 ) in one order

- Edible Oil and Home Care are top 2 categories. People spend twice on edible oil compared to Personal Care.

- Tea is twice as popular as coffee in Bangalore. Now that is a surprise for us also.

- Juice consumption is almost thrice of soft drinks. Who said Bangalore is not health conscious?

- We are sending a SWAT team to analyze that why is there a strong co-relation between people who buy orange juice also buy Harpic Plus Orange toilet cleaner.

- The average Gross Merchandise Value of a single order is 4-5 times of offline retail and this is when we are yet to launch the million features we have in mind to increase it.

- Expenses on diapers is 10 times of what it is on infant food. How do you explain that input/output balance Bangalore?

- Amount of Aata sold is thrice of rice. Now that sounds like a poem.

- Our customers like laziness.. almost 30% ordered maggi (hello software engineers/startups)

- Gross Margins in double digits is not a dream but reality once you get your category mix right

- Over 15% orders are “Sho Shweet”. I mean they have atleast 1 kg of sugar.

- Bangalore hates to take care of it’s shoes. This category reminds me of my rank in my class at IIT Kanpur.

- Our customer ‘like’ turmeric thrice as compared to chilli powder. Yellow yellow, lazy fellow.

- People spend twice as much on cleaning toilet over teeth. Get your priorities clear guys.

- Based on our deep research, we have come to conclusion that per Kg of toor daal you need to spend 22.346 grams of Turmeric powder to make a perfect daal

- Sorry Imran .. as per us Akshay Kumar is doing better. Thums up Sales are twice as good as Coke

- We are planning to hire PhDs to figure out why 27% of our customer buy organic food and “Act II Butter popcorn” in the same order. If you have a clue, write to us. I promise you Rasam Rice lunch with our team.

- And last but not the least, our sincere apologies to all the customers who searched for “dark fantasy” on google and ended up seeing the “Sunfeast Dark Fantasy biscuit” at ZopNow. This is as close as we can get to help you. [Reproduced from Zopnow blog]

So what do you make of these data points (keep in mind that Zopnow is currently active only in South Bangalore, but this is a well-about representation)?

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On the cards: Strict Solvency and Auditing Norms for LLPs in India

LLPs have a little something to be concerned about now. The government is all set to introduce stringent solvency and auditing norms for Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) in India. This is concerning for them as it adds to the compliance burden for them, but at the same time, this move can bring in more transparency. All this comes amidst the need to satisfy RBI’s regulatory concerns.

The Economic Times today quoted a senior official from the Corporate Affairs ministry saying, “The RBI had made it clear to us in our several correspondences that they have their reservations about the LLP Act. We have decided to tighten some crucial rules under the purview of the current Act to win confidence of investors and regulators”. He said the changes will make LLPs more competent and easier to monitor.

LLPs are becoming increasingly popular as the new form of business structure because of the loads of benefits they enjoy. Unlike a regular partnership, an LLP partner is not responsible or liable for another partner’s negligence. This particular feature of this new form of business has made the RBI awry. The LLP Act had been introduced so that small businesses and law and audit firms could benefit from it but today many corporate houses are increasingly using the LLP law to save significant amounts of tax and side step regulatory burden.

The changes in the rules have been welcomed by the industry experts.  It is obvious that clearer and more elaborate solvency and auditing norms will make LLP a more credible business structure. This will ultimately lead to better financial structure and will lead to the growth of this form of business as banks would also have added confidence in lending to the LLP.

The government has now asked the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) to draw out separate accounting standards for LLPs to avoid gray areas in functioning of such firms. We’ll now have to keep an eye out for what they come out with.

Related Read:

• What if things go south? How to shutdown Pvt Limited or a LLP Business in India
• LLP vs. Private Limited: How to Choose Company Incorporation

Discussion: LLP Vs Pvt Ltd from a tax efficiency perspective

» More Legal Resources for Startups

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Report: Amazon To Bring Kindle To Japan In April

Business daily The Nikkei says it learned that Amazon Japan, the country's second-biggest e-commerce company, is planning to finally offer its e-book reader Kindle to Japanese customers.

According to the paper, Amazon is expected to launch Kindle devices in April this year "for less than 20,000 yen" (US$257). Apparently, the Kindle Touch will be positioned as the flagship model, while there is no word on how or if the Kindle Fire will be introduced, too.

For the 3G connection, Amazon has chosen mobile carrier NTT Docomo as its partner. Just like in other markets, Japanese Kindle owners will be able to download books over 3G for free, provided they decide to go for Kindles offering both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Rumors about Amazon Japan entering the domestic e-book market have been circulating for a long time. In November/December 2011, for example, The Nikkei speculated that the company was ready to start offering e-books by the end of 2011 (which obviously didn't happen).

In an interview with the paper from November 2011, Yoshinobu Noma, president of major publisher Kodansha, said that he estimates Japan's e-book market to be worth 65 billion yen (US$837 million). Noma also said that 90% of sales in this segment come from content distributed to cell phones - a number that will surely change when the Kindle becomes a hit in Japan, too.

In Japan, the Amazon device will go head-to-head with other e-readers and tablet hybrids like Sharp's Galapagos, Sony's E-Reader, Toshiba's BookPlace, Panasonic's Raboo, or Fujitsu's Flepia.

Report: Amazon To Bring Kindle To Japan In April

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Rocket Internet launches Pinterest clone in Southeast Asia

Rocket Internet, a German company well-known for their ability to clone thriving businesses and execute it in other geographical markets, have launched a Pinterest clone called Pinspire, reported Daily Social.

Not exactly an inspiring name, but Rocket Internet is not known for being original either. What’s unique about them though, is how fast they are able to copy a business idea and get it up and running in no time.

Pinspire, which, like Pinterest, is an online bulletin board that enables users to bookmark and collect images from anywhere on the Internet, has been launched globally, including the Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Vietnam.

Their decision to copy Pinterest isn’t exactly a surprising choice. According to comScore, Pinterest is the fastest growing independent website in the US to hit ten million unique monthy unique visits.

This latest revelation sheds further light on Rocket Internet’s warpath in Southeast Asia. Last month, I broke the news that Rocket Internet has already launched a fashion e-commerce site called Zalora.com in Malaysia. The site has since launched in Singapore.

They are also going into the furniture and online food takeaway business.

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Moscow-based VC firm Ru-Net to invest US$50M in Southeast Asia

Ru-Net, a Russion VC firm focused on funding Internet and IT industries, has plans to invest US$50M in Southeast Asia in the next two or three years, reported Penn Olson.

Successful companies that they’ve already invested in include: OZON.ru, an Amazon-like website, BigLion, a daily deals site, and ivi, an online video site.

They also operate a separate fund called RTP Ventures, that focuses on US investments.

In Southeast Asia, they have already funded MJ Group, a Vietnamese e-commerce platform. They are looking at the Indian market next.

The Russian firm hopes to pump in around US$5 to 20M in a single transaction, focusing on startups that have already gone pass the seed round and operate in the areas of online travel, e-commerce, entertainment, and social gaming.

Right now, they have Digital Media Partners, a VC firm in the emerging markets in Southeast Asia, as a regional partner.

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Japan to Get Kindle Touch in April? [REPORT]

The Nikkei Business Daily is reporting that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) will start selling its Kindle ebook reader in Japan as early as April, with pricing falling somewhere in the 10,000 to 20,000 yen range ($130 to $260). The Kindle Touch will likely be the company’s flagship device, and will reportedly have free data access via Docomo’s (NYSE:DCM) 3G network.

Sale of the device would of course require that Amazon first nail down a deal with Japanese publishers for its e-book service in the country, something which has proven elusive for the company thus far.

As for the Kindle Fire tablet, that device still remains exclusively on sale only in the US.

The Japanese ebook market was worth 65 billion yen (or about $846.9 million) back in 2010, but the print market was worth about 30 times that at two trillion yen (nearly $26 billion).

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Breaking: Amazon Gets Approval to Setup its Courier Service in India

In between all those ecommerce ‘for sale’ stories, Indian government has granted Amazon approval to setup its logistics service in India (we earlier reported Amazon’s application to setup its courier service in India in the month odf December, 2011)

Amazon has taken a slow approach to build its India business and surprised everybody with the launch of Junglee, a price comparison service. While Amazon uses Junglee to understand the consumer behavior, they will be setting the logistics arm in tandem and do expect acquisitions in this space, as opposed to Amazon acquiring overyhyped ecommerce players.

 

And like we shared earlier, Mumbai could be the delivery hub for Amazon India operations (though Junglee team team is in Bangalore) and the company has been looking to hire delivery operations manager in Mumbai area.

Interesting times ahead for the Indian ecommerce industry.

What an interesting week, by the way?

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Mangajet Makes Your Tweet Into A Comic-style Illustration

Mangajet [J] is a new Japanese service which let you make a Japanese manga-comic style illustration with provided characters, background images, baloons with your text.

The generated comic strip can be saved and shared on Twitter.

Following to the Japanese manga standard, text will be written in top-to-bottom direction so Western languages won't fit well, unfortunately.

The service was released as a promotion of a free digital manga material directory Manga Sozai Jiten, which is run by Datacraft.

There is Feel on!, a web service to comicalize your Twitter timeline as well (and that one now supports English).

via INTERNET Watch

Mangajet Makes Your Tweet Into A Comic-style Illustration

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LinkedIn Records 25 Million Users in APAC, Grew By 25 Percent

20 million was the number of LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) users in Asia Pacific (APAC) last publicly announced. Just four months later, today, the figure has grown by 25 percent to 25 million. We were told that four million of the users originate from Southeast Asia. Singapore, though small, boosts about 700,000 members island-wide. The growth in Southeast Asia was likely triggered by LinkedIn’s recent language localization move, which provides users with LinkedIn in Indonesian, Bahasa Malaysia, and Korean languages.

There aren’t any plans for China so far, as Arvind Rajan, managing director and VP for Asia Pacific and Japan, said last week at coffee chat session at Startups in Asia 2012 (Singapore). But he did, however, shared that LinkedIn in China is growing as more Chinese are using the tool for hiring. There are more than one million LinkedIn users in China so far.

And for Japan, LinkedIn will have an engineering office specially for the Japanese language, which highlights LinkedIn dedication towards localization. Arvind explained in our discussion last week:

One of the things I’ve loved about LinkedIn is that we tend to be very entrepreneurial in the way we approach things. Growth has been impressive and exciting, especially in the APAC region.

India makes up the vast majority of the networks users in Asia, with over 13 million users, according to LinkedIn’s own ad tool.

Arvind Rajan, at our Startups in Asia event

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