Is Qtrove The Etsy of India?

Qtrove is the marketplace for products which customers would love to own without unsustainable discounts. “We wanted to build the ‘Etsy of India’ with an Indian twist. Our investors helped us to refine the idea which finally developed into the concept of Qtrove. Currently, we are incubated and promoted by Growthstory (Incubator promoted by K Ganesh and Meena Ganesh) in Bangalore,” says Vinamra Pandiya.

Qtrove stands for the Curated (Q) trove. Pandiya feels that the central idea to start Qtrove was to break the clutter in ecommerce and bring the focus back on unique and curated products. “With most big companies offering unrealistic discounts and displaying the same mass produced products to its customers, we feel, shopping is now reduced to a mere chore,” he says.

Qtrove aims to be a curated marketplace that exhibits and sells non-mass produced items from small entrepreneurs across the country. These products are unique in nature and are not easily available across the online spectrum. It seeks to empower local entrepreneurs who are producing exotic/unique products in their vicinity and give them a widespread national platform. “In today’s era of assembly line mass production and consumption, we wish to release our customers from the tyranny of choice and add fun back to the shopping experience. We have also adopted a seller first approach to give our vendors a wider reach as well as share their stories through dedicated vendor pages on our website and social media. We want to make customers for life and not based on some discount fad and hence this slow but sure approach,” says Pandiya who is a traditional businessmen at heart and believes in the idea of starting the business with the core focus of creating value for all the concerned stakeholders.

With a slow and gradual shift towards an increase in demand for organic and sustainable products, going green is the need of the hour and in the future, there will be a growing demand for sustainable and eco-friendly products. Hence, 55% of Qtrove’s audience base is females between 30-45 years.

From organic baby products as one of the emerging categories to men’s grooming range, choco fudge, raw honey, preservative free jams and pickles, baby products, natural cosmetics and beauty products, Qtrove.com caters to 5000+ products, across 30+ categories.

With a mobile optimized website, Qtrove began marketing actively from Dec 2016 and since then the subscriber base has grown close to 20,000 with 70% of non-discounted orders. “We are unit level profitable from day 1 and are aiming for operational level profitability by the end of 2017,” hopes Pandiya.