What are some of the trends in e-commerce companies that will continue to stay in 2016?
2015 was a great year for BankBazaar. We have gone from strength to strength and have consolidated our position in the financial service market.
One of our finest moments of 2015 was the USD 60M funding we secured from investors led by Amazon. This was the first such investment by Amazon in India as well as one of its largest. More significantly, the other participants in the funding include Walden International and Sequoia Capital, our long-time investors who go way back to 2011 and2014 respectively. To us, this is a reaffirmation of their confidence in our technology and business model, as well as in our ability to help consumers access the right financial products.
We started 2015 with a host of new products. As we close the year, we have more than 100 products featured on our site. Correspondingly, our number of partners has grown to 50. To support this growth, we have also doubled our employee strength over the last one year. At every stage, we have focussed on two key areas: mobile integration and paperless transactions. Our emphasis has been on making the purchase of financial products more mobile and facilitating end-to-end instant support from the application until the disbursal of the product. We intend to carry this forward in 2016 and establish ourselves as the acknowledged leaders in the financial products marketspace.
How do you see the evolution of technologies that will drive next-gen e-commerce in coming days?
The two key technology evolutions that we believe will make a difference in 2016 are massive the adoption of smartphones and the growing tendency to make more and more processes automated and paperless.
The penetration and impact of mobile technology has been huge and life changing. This is especially pertinent in Tier2 and Tier3 cities. We have also seen a lot of traction from the border towns like Leh, Jaisalmer, Imphal, and Kargil. For people in these cities, the smartphone has opened up more avenues and options than ever before. The transparency and accountability of online process, coupled with easy accessibility, will make this technology even more powerful and heighten its impact in the coming days.
The shift from offline to online processing and lesser paperwork for any task is another major change we are witnessing. This demand for paperless transactions is only going to intensify over time. This model is also fuelled by the increasing need for security from fraud by both consumers as well as the vendors. Electronic verification of consumers
