Gizmofashion.com - An eCommerce Brand for Electronics Products and Accessories
Gizmofashion had an alpha launch in November 2012 and public launch in Q1 2013. Gizmofashion.com is part of Keshiha Services, a consumer internet and technology startup based out of Delhi. The company was founded by Divyan Gupta. It is an eCommerce brand for 100% new, genuine and warranty-backed electronic products and accessories. The startup just begun its journey and offer products and accessories from top global brands like Apple, Sony, Canon, LG, Samsung, Manfrotto, Beats, Hitachi, Olympus, National Geographic, Gitzo, KRK, Adam Audio, Alto Professional, Cerwin-Wega and many others.
Sujata Sangwan Interacts With Divyan Gupta, Founder and CEO, Gizmofashion.com and Spoke to Him
How was Gizmofashion started?
We began life as a brand focusing only on curated fashionable accessories like cases and covers for mobile phones, laptop bags and other accessories for all types of gizmos. And hence the name, Gizmofashion.
But a sour incident in our personal lives made us pivot our business model. We purchased a smartphone from one of the marketplaces. All was well until the phone began to give problems just after 3 months. When we took it to the service center, we were shocked because our “new” phone was already out of warranty! But how could that be? It slowly became evident that we were cheated – we had been sold a refurbished phone as a fresh unit. We soon realized that we weren’t alone – there were many more customers like us who had been cheated online by many marketplace sellers. It is then we decided to do something about this. And our belief that we can change this inspired our pivot.
We began working on solving the biggest cause of worry and anxiety for customers like you and us who want to shop online for electronic products – am I purchasing a new and genuine product or not? Will I be able to enjoy it for its lifetime knowing that it’s warranty-backed? Or will I end up wasting my hard earned money because it's fake, refurbished and warranty-deficit?
What are the special key features of your startup?
We are a curated eCommerce brand that brings products to life using curated content and product videos. Each product has content that is prepared after extensive research and not just copy pasted from manufacturer’s website or other eCommerce sites. We believe that customers have the right to know comprehensively about the product that they want to buy and work very hard to provide them with as much information as possible in a manner that makes it easy for them to consume that information.
Our customers absolutely love our service! And we were selected amongst the Top 100 Companies in Asia in 2015 by Red Herring. We think that’s a good indicator of how far we have come in such a short span of time even though for us it is still the beginning.
How are you different from the existing ones?
Apart from providing very rich product content that helps the customer connect better to the product and the brand, we also provide some very interesting ‘smart shopping assists’.
For instance, we recently launched Gizmofashion Smartphone Index or GFSI, as it is more commonly known as. GFSI is the world’s first and only comprehensive smartphone rating system that helps a customer buy their next phone intelligently.
The rating system evaluates each smartphone available on Gizmofashion.com across 50 key parameters that cover everything from display resolution to processor performance and even to the build quality of the phone. These parameters are categorized under 10 broad Measurement Categories. The rating is on a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is the highest. A higher rated phone is likely to give the customer a better performance than a lower rated phone.
Just like the Energy Star ratings help customers understand in a standardized manner which appliances and devices are energy efficient, GFSI is designed for only one thing – helping the customer buy their new smartphone intelligently! It provides the customer a completely unbiased picture of how good a smartphone really is and cuts out all the marketing jargon.
GFSI was launched in response to numerous customer demands around how to objectively assess a smartphone. With a multitude of smartphone models available in the market today, there is a lot of customer confusion and we were constantly being asked by customers to recommend them the phone that would give them the best value. That’s when we decided to create this rating system that automatically and objectively evaluates each and every smartphone available on Gizmofashion and assigns a rating to let customers understand how each phone measures against the other.
Similarly we just launched one of the most comprehensive AC Selector Calculator for the Indian customers that helps them find the AC with the right tonnage for their needs. The algorithm powering the calculator factors in the governments and BEE’s standards – both existing and future ones and helps provide city specific recommendations across 40+ Indian cities.
Therefore we are very focused on building a ‘smart e-commerce’ brand – one where customers can buy 100% new, genuine and warranty-backed electronic products and accessories from top global brands with complete product knowledge and smart shopping assists and pay as per their convenience using any of our multiple payment modes all the while enjoying free shipping and delivery to anywhere in India. What we offer is an informative, super easy, secure and an enjoyable shopping experience with complete peace of mind!
Funding Status & Monetization
We are a bootstrapped company. We haven’t really gone out to raise funds as of yet and will evaluate that if the same is needed. As an eCommerce brand, our monetization model involves retailing products to consumers.
Challenges faced by Gizmofashion while setting up the business...
We were fortunate enough not to face a lot of challenges. This was primarily because of the comprehensiveness of business planning and our ability to get partners. However one of the challenge that we faced like everyone else was access to immediate capital when such a situation warranted itself for business purposes. That was the time when we had to fall back on personal savings but we persisted and are now growing every day.
Traction Number
We are growing at an average annual rate of 200%+. We achieved financial break-even in FY 2013-14 and will continue offering more fantastic products backed by an obsessive focus on customer delight.
Market Opportunity
The electronic products and accessories market in India is huge. There are multiple categories within this and just the consumer electronics market alone is projected to touch $29 billion by 2020 from the current $10 billion. This doesn’t include the mobile market and that should give a sense of how massive this market is. India remains a highly unpenetrated market as compared to the global average and that’s why there is a steady growth projected.
What advice you want to give to the new entrants in this space?
Retailing is a very tough business. Especially consumer electronics since the margins are extremely thin and in some cases just not there! So for any entrepreneur wanting to get into this, they have to ensure that they have their strategy planned very well along with the ability to stay in the business financially. It is a hard business and not really for the faint of heart.
