CHENNAI:The Tamil Nadu Handicrafts Development Corporation, Poompuhar, seems to be going all out to leverage the e-commerce platform.
Days after it inked a deal with SnapDeal to sell its products, a senior official told Express that talks were on with Flipkart for a similar partnership.
In December last year, Poompuhar went live with its own online store, but the realities of economics saw it go for a more practical method to leverage the booming online marketplace — tie-up with established e-commerce players. “To gain a foothold in this space we need to spend crores on advertisement. Tie-ups make more sense,” said the official.
The Snapdeal-Poompuhar store puts the corporation in a position to market their wares to the large NRI market for Indian handicrafts. Apart from giving it more visibility than its own website, the partnership puts at its disposal a larger logistics network. “We see some overseas sales, but we cannot put a number to that,” said the official. But the corporation, which made Rs 30.87 crore during 2013-14 and is expected to end this fiscal with around Rs 34 crore, is looking to increase the number to Rs 50 crore by March 2016.
What’s more, Poompuhar is planning for the NRI and overseas markets to contribute more than 15 per cent of total e-sales.
The corporation has launched two applications for Android and iOS platforms. While both are fully functional and can be downloaded from the site, they are not available on Google PlayStore and Apple iStore yet.
“But they will be up soon,” the official said. These avenues have begun seeing sales, one as high as Rs 1.2 lakh, in the short time they have existed. The corporation also has plans to come out with a separate strategy for big ticket sales and an announcement on this will be made in the near future.