The Indian e-retailing industry is booming. Case in point, the market size has grown from $600 million two years ago to $2.3 billion. We are at a similar inflection pointasChina was 10 years ago. This is just the beginning. The e-retailing market is expected to reach $32 Billion by 2020.According to Matrix Partners, many ‘Billion dollar e-commerce companies’ are expected to be created in India by then. At present, there are just 3: Flipkart, Snapdeal and Paytm that has just joined the club. Notably, these 3 and the other big domestic and foreign players, namely Shopclues, eBay and Amazon, follow a horizontal marketplace model. As competition amongst them heats up and it is hard to distinguish from each other in terms of products and user experience, new players are emerging with a focus on differentiation.And not surprisingly, they focus on vertical or niche categories. Here’s a look at some ofthem.image credit:Shutter StockTradusandBigBasket(Groceries): Tradus has recently pivoted from being a horizontal marketplace to selling only groceries. While it remains a marketplace, connecting local buyers and sellers in seven cities, BigBasketis not a marketplace and therefore has morecontrol over the entire supply chain. BigBasket has presence in four cities and has its own warehouses and delivery network.UrbanLadder,FabFurnishandPepperfry(Furniture): UrbanLadder is a curated online marketplace for furniture and home decor products, and currently operates in seven cities. FabFurnish too is shifting from an inventory-led model to a marketplace model, thus becoming more cost-effective and also covering more cities. Pepperfry is amanaged marketplace that switched focus from initially selling products across multiple lifestyle categories to only furnitureand home décor. It has the largest coverage,shipping to about 500 cities in India.FirstCry,HopScotchandBabyOye(Baby care products): FirstCry is the leader in the baby care products online retail segment, and has been around for 4 years now. HopScotch is a relatively new entrant and has a flash sales model (which offers smaller scale) as opposed to FirstCry’s inventory-based model. BabyOye follows both an inventory storage model and a just-in-time arrangement with its distribution partners. It had acquired its competitor Hoopos in late 2013. In return, BabyOye has been acquired by the Mahindragroup in February 2015. It appears that the niche baby care players have increasingly been edged out of the market by the large horizontal players such as Flipkart, SnapDeal and Amazon. As a result, out of the half a dozen baby care focused players that had sprung up about five years ago, only a couple of etailers, like FirstCry and Hopscotch, remain in the game.Jabong,ZoviandFashionAndYou(Lifestyle): The lifestyle categories consist of apparel, shoes, jewellery, accessories and home décor and accounts for a massive45% of the entire e-retail market. With the acquisition of Myntra, the prominent playersare Jabong, Zovi and FashionAndYou. They continue to face enormous competition from the horizontal players such as Flipkart, SnapDeal and Amazon that are focusing on fashion more and more. Jabong has been inexistence since 2012 and follows both an inventory model and a managed marketplace model. On the other hand, Zovi designs and manufactures privately labelledlifestyle apparel and accessory products that it sells exclusively online. Lastly, FashionAndYou is a marketplace that operates in a flash sales model, offering products from retailers at discounts for only a limited period.CaratLane,VoyllaandBlueStone: Bluestone has an end-to-end approach to selling jewellery online that involves designing and manufacturing themselves. It also has a just-in-time manufacturing model where the jewellery is manufactured within days ofan order being placed. Caratlane too designs and manufactures its jewellery in-house, but also has a marketplace model for solitaires sourced from vendors globally.While CaratLane and Bluestone sell precious jewellery, Voylla deals largely in imitation jewellery though an inventory-led model.Cbazaar,IndianRootsandCraftsvilla(Ethnic Lifestyle): An emerging trend is niche players dealing in ethnic lifestyle products that have a huge demand outside India in the international market. Three of the prominent players in the space, Cbazaar, IndianRoots and Craftsvilla, have over 50% of their sales of ethnic apparel, home furnishing, home décor, jewellery, bags, etc. originating from abroad. Notably all of them work in a zero-inventory marketplace model.LimeRoadandXarato(Social Shopping): Another recent trend is social shopping where shoppers’ friends become involved inthe shopping experience. There are two onlyplayers in India that have integrated social shopping into the online product discovery and purchasing experience: Limeroad and Xarato* andmany more. Both are lifestyle category marketplaces and differentiate themselves from the rest of the competition by providing value to customers through superior user experience. They have set the benchmark for the next generation of e-commerce sites with social baked in fromthe start.

While Steven Hsiao and Anson Tsui were in their senior year of college at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009, they decided to start a delivery service for Vietnamese and Mexican food. They sourced fresh ingredients, prepared the meals and delivered it themselves to other students.

Neither Hsiao nor Tsui had much of a food background; they studied sociology and bioengineering, respectively. But looking at their peers in school, they saw an opportunity for a late-night delivery service.

"It was through that experience that we really understood how inefficient traditional delivery services are," Hsiao told Mashable. With that in mind, they decided to start a different kind of food business after college, one that would provide healthy meals to customers with virtually no wait time.

The startup, called SpoonRocket, launched in part of San Francisco just under a year ago, promising to deliver locally sourced lunch meals to customers in 10 minutes or less for $8, with no delivery fee tacked on. The catch is that SpoonRocket only offers two meal choices at a time — one vegetarian and one not.

On Thursday, SpoonRocket announced that it had raising an $11 million Series A round led by Foundation Capital, bringing the startup's total to more than $13 million. It is also expanding into all of the San Francisco area and is planning to introduce dinner options soon.

The plan is to use the additional funding to bring on more staff and chefs — doubling the number of employees to more than 100 by the end of this year — and expand into Los Angeles or Seattle in the coming months.

The founders had initially set out to raise $8 million to $10 million, but the funding round comes at a time when investor interest in the food space is running high.

Munchery, a startup that offers same-day delivery for meals, recently raised $28 million. Blue Apron, a service that provides recipes and fresh ingredients for meals, recently raised $50 million. And Sprig, a similar service to SpoonRocket, recently raised $10 million.

One investor in the food startup space previously told Mashable that the optimism here is based on the belief that food is inherently social and these startups enjoy a growth curve similar to that of Uber. Hsiao also alluded to Uber during the course of our interview.

"Uber is the taxi button on your phone," he said. "We are the food button on your phone." "Uber is the taxi button on your phone," he said. "We are the food button on your phone."

Of course, all the funding being pumped into the space means SpoonRocket has plenty of competition to achieve that goal. For now, the startup is betting that speed and price can help it stand out, though it's unclear if either or both will be sustainable as it expands into new cities.

Source: Mashable

Why stand in a line to pay your bills when you can have someone do it for you? Life would be so much simpler if you could hire someone to pick up your laundry instead of having to do it yourself. And now you can.
Our Peon is the service started to help solve the  problem of having to be in two places at the same time. Now don't choose between having an afternoon party with friends and going to the market to buy bread; just hire some of the helpers at OurPeon and you can enjoy your leisure time. Whether it is a matter of standing in a queue to pay your electricity bills, visiting the market to pick up groceries, travelling to and from the dry cleaners, having your shoes repaired, picking up movie tickets, or anything else that needs to be done, the helpers at Our Peon will be there for all your sundry tasks.


You can hire them by mailing to ourpeon@gmail.com, leaving a comment on their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Ourpeon