Indiplum.com, an online social product discovery platform focused on online shopping in India has launched an innovative “Plum and Earn” feature that enables its users to provide online product recommendations and make money from each sale that happens as a result of those recommendations.
Even if a user simply bookmarks a popular product on the site, they can still receive “Plum and Earn” cash for each sale of that product, with the amount being algorithmically computed and notified in real time using Indiplum’s affiliate powered platform. Users can also get “Plum and Earn” cash at Indiplum.com while shopping for themselves. The payback that Indiplum.com users get is a percentage of sales and can go up to as much as INR 200 per sale.
The company has about 40 online merchants in India participating in the Indiplum.com “Plum and Earn” program currently, but is actively expanding its online merchant network, with the aim to eventually cover the entire Indian ecommerce industry.
For participating merchants, Indiplum.com has significantly brought down their cost per sale by effectively turning its own user base into a powerful, social affiliate sales network. This enables brands and online merchants to reward users who bring friends and family to buy their products. For trendsetting shoppers, it’s a way to monetize their recommendations based on, say, superior taste in fashion or even knowledge of certain product categories like electronic gadgets.
Indiplum.com was founded on the premise that online shopping is becoming more social, and users seek out and trust advice on what to buy from experts and trendsetters from amongst their friends, peer group and like minded shoppers. With social networking and search acting as primary entry points to online retail sites in India, Indiplum.com is addressing both discovery and recommendation in the context of online purchases.
Product discovery on the site is made easy and fun by organizing things in a contextual and intuitive way, rather than the catalog driven model embraced by online retailers. With the launch of “Plum and Earn” program, the company is now putting in place the infrastructure that is needed to handle the next phase of viral growth.
India is the 5th largest e-commerce market in terms of visitors to Retail categories, adding over 15 million users in last 12 months. By 2015 India will have 38 million active online shoppers. Indiplum.com is placing a calculated bet on the increased adoption of online shopping among the young and trendy from Tier I and Tier II cities in India, a user segment for which online recommendations from peer groups and social networks play a role in influencing their buying decisions.
Indiplum.com is based in Bangalore, founded by two IIT/ISB graduates with several years of experience in technology and consumer goods industries between them in India and the US. The company was bootstrap funded in its early months before successfully raising a round of angel funding. Contact: reachus@indiplum.com http://www.facebook.com/indiplum http://twitter.com/indiplum http://www.indiplum.com/featured
