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Follow These #3 Tricks to Start an Online Business Like a Pro According to a report by consulting firm Zinnov, people are doing business worth $8-9 Billion through Facebook and Whatsapp.

By Arjun Sarin

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Entrepreneurship is bustling in the country; young graduates prefer to start their business rather than take up jobs. Considering the fast-growing penetration and instantaneousness of the online sphere, most of these new businesses are digital.

India currently has more than 450 million internet users as per IAMAI and IMRB International, and the number is set to double by 2021. Also, Counterpoint Research estimates India's smartphone population at 300 million and is growing rapidly. Both factors backed by digital payments and logistics penetration has helped the e-commerce industry, which is poised to touch a market size of $200 billion by 2026, as per a report by Morgan Stanley. This will mean that 12 percent of total retailing will be done online. Considering the fact that e-commerce businesses cater to customers irrespective of their geographic location and also have ease of access and round the clock availability, this finding does not surprise.

So, if you want to live the e-commerce business dream, allow us to guide you through these three quick starting-up tips. We recommend that before choosing the medium of selling, you should first think about what product you would sell. We suggest you choose a niche category which is a specialty and not easily available in the market, this will help you in maximizing profit and remain in low competition zone. Once you have chosen a product then you can follow any of the below modes to start your e-commerce business:

Social Selling: Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp get millions of customers every day. These social mediums can be a great place to start your business since customers already visit these social networks to discover new stories. Starting a business on these social channels doesn't require any investment. All you need to do is create a Facebook page or Instagram handle or a Whatsapp business account and take beautiful pictures of your products and start posting them with relevant information. With Whatsapp, you can reach out to your friends, family, and groups while on Facebook and Instagram you can get discovered by new people as well. According to a report by consulting firm Zinnov, people are doing business worth $8-9 Billion through Facebook and Whatsapp.

Marketplaces: Flipkart and Amazon the two leading marketplaces in the country, are setting new sales records every year. The 2017 Diwali sales doubled as compared to last season as the two marketplaces sold goods worth more than $1.5 billion in just 4 days. These marketplaces offer a great platform for a merchant to set up and grow their business since millions of customers already come on these marketplaces. The seller just needs to focus on product assortment and inventory while marketplace takes care of marketing and fulfillment. You simply get started by signing up as a seller with the marketplaces, prepare catalog and upload it. As you start receiving orders ensure you package them well and get it shipped on time.

Building Your Brand: As your business grows, building your own brand becomes an imperative, as it allows you to grow more, take even more control of your business and be on the minds of the customers all the time, creating, even more, recall for your business. Technology can be overwhelming and hire developers may delineate you from your focus. Hence hosted e-commerce platforms are a great way to get started where all technology software and infrastructure is maintained & managed.You can access the platform via SAAS (software as a service). All you need to do is upload your branding, inventory, and set up your domain to start your branded e-commerce.

With the New Year, just 22 days away, you must be setting up resolutions for yourself and we sincerely wish that if entrepreneurship is one of them then the above information will help you to get started and live your dreams.

Arjun Sarin

Lead Strategic Partnership, GetMeAShop

Arjun Sarin leads product partnerships at Times Internet's GetMeAShop - an eCommerce SAAS platform for SMEs to build their digital stores. He is a computer engineer with an MBA from FORE School of Management. 

He has worked with global clients in implementing enterprise solutions during his 3.5 years stint with Infosys. He strongly believes that technology can help SMEs grow their business and this belief drives him to hustle hard to take GetMeAShop to more SMEs.
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