-Ayshwaria Lakshmi
Federation of All India IT Association (FAIITA) has plans to launch a B2C platform by sept this year, after introducing the E-store last month.
Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, recently had launched FAIITA GlobalLinker, a digital platform solution for Indian IT enterprises to bring their business online and join the global SME community. FAIITA GlobalLinker platform will help FAIITA’s Member Channel Community, who are sellers of IT hardware, to create online E-stores for themselves to sell their products online. “The Initiative taken by FAIITA pursuing Digital India Programme will empower several small and big IT Entrepreneurs to be enabled with Digital India Campaign and keep their businesses growing in the challenging times. Since big IT Giants have resolved to invest in India including Facebook, Google and so on, this shall definitely bring growth in the IT Businesses”, Ravishankar Prasad added.
These E-stores are pre-embedded with logistic solutions and payment gateways. “The members can choose their preferred partners and use their services,” said Devesh Rastogi, Vice President of FAIITA. The introduction of E-Commerce technologies have changed market dynamics and consumer behaviour. Further, Covid19 conditions changed the buying behaviour to online buying which was naturally suiting the online operators or digitally-enabled businesses because of various restrictions brought in by the Government from time to time. With aggressive marketing and predatory pricing, online portals have eaten market share of almost 30% and are still growing even though the restrictions because of Covid19 are prevailing.
In this changed scenario, FAIITA has undertaken challenge to reverse this trend through various initiatives and creating a hybrid model of business for IT Shops and B&M partners. Understanding the strengths and weakness of IT dealers, it has drawn strategy using two most important strength of channel, i.e geo positioning across India and a huge level of inventories in which channel invests.
To take on this challenge head-on, FAIITA has created a two-pronged strategy, one part of which is E-Store, which will primarily empower each store in order to a digitally enabled platform as a minimal affordable cost. This enablement will create atmosphere where IT stores will have a digital presence which can be seamlessly connected to the second initiative which is B2C platform, according to the vision document released by FAIITA.
FAIITA plans to reach more than 50 Thousand shopkeepers across India to enjoy this initiative. Following this, it plans to collaborate and introduce international SME players into this. “These initiatives would be game changers for the IT industry,” said Devesh. “The biggest challenge we are facing now in this present situation is to reach out and meet various members across India. But we still trying to converse with them over online.”
FEATURES OF FAIITA INITIATIVES AND ITS ADVANTAGES:
- Whereas on any E-Commerce platform cost of transactions varies from 7% to 15% depending on product. Cost at FAIITA portal shall be merely 1.5% to 2% depending on payment process adopted, which is merely the payment gateway charges whereas, FAIITA being a welfare organization, shall work earning no profit.
- Delivery time for each order on FAIITA platform shall be smartly reduced to 5-6 hrs in comparison with 2 to 3 days by any other portal. This will happen because of geo-positioning advantage of every E-Store dealer.
- Realtime price approvals in case of dynamic pricing approvals to avoid any loss to any dealer.
- Marketing on a shared cost basis for the portal, making is a viable proposition, Cumulative advertisement can decimate the cost burden.
- FAIITA will ensure that all its E-Stores be recognized by brands so that benefits from brands are passed on to them in a smooth manner.
- FAIITA shall provide ‘FAIITA Enabled E-Store’ Certificate/Placard/Display, co-branded with the District/State Association Logo, to be shown ata prominent a prominent place of each E-Store to develop a sense of belongingness and better customer trust