“If discounts are withdrawn, the entire ecommerce business would disappear as people primarily shop online for the discounts on sales.” – TV Mohandas Pai.
The above statement shared by Pai in the wake of Flipkart losing appeal against the Income Tax department against reclassifying discounts as expenditure is completely validated by the findings in the recent “Social Media Report On 100 Startups” by VAIZLE.
According to the report, in Q1 and Q3 2017, most social media posts by ecommerce startups were mostly discount or offer related keywords. Also, 15% of the tweets were related to offers and discounts, most of which came from horizontal and fashion ecommerce startups.
The top three startups with the highest percentage of discount and offer related tweets were Flipkart, FabFurnish, and Zopnow.
The report further provides the benchmarks created across 13 categories, including the most popular sector as well as the startup in each category.
Here is a glimpse of all the startups which took the top spot in each category:
Most Active Category
In terms of categories, real estate was the clear winner here. On an average, real estate startups post over 2082 posts in a year. The second spot was taken up by classified startups which includes companies like Cartrade, Quikr, and CarDekho. The startups in this category were seen posting 1510.7 posts per brand. Horizontal ecommerce took the third spot with 1476.1 posts per brand.
- Here, Housing.com claimed the top spot as the ‘most active brand in real estate’ with a total activity of 2,827 during the year
- Overall, BookMyShow was found as the most active startup with 7,906 total posts in a year
**Home furniture category was the worst performing category with only 647.3 posts per brand.
Most Engaging Category
Fashion & Lifestyle ecommerce startups topped the engagement chart with 11.6 Mn engagements followed by Travel & Hotel Marketplace and Horizontal ecommerce startups with 6.47 and 6.13 Mn engagement per brand respectively.
- Most engaging brand in this category was Myntra with an average of 3 engagements every second during the year 2017.
- Top two of the top three startups belonged to Fashion & Lifestyle category. Ecommerce startups like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm could not find a place in top 10 most engaging startups.
- Travel & Marketplace startup Ixigo came out to be the startup with most comments, it reported about 1,67,205 comments. Alibaba-backed Paytm received 97,500 comments. Youth lifestyle startup, Happily Unmarried was third in this parameter with 92,459 comments.
- The most active startup was the most amplified startup too. BookMyShow’s content was shared 360,608 times, more than two times than that of its closest counterpart, Mobikwik whose content was shared 177,869 times. Paytm took the third spot with 143,739 amplifications.
- The top two most applauded startups belonged to Fashion & Lifestyle category. Craftsvilla and Koovs together got 20.82 Mn applauses. It is due to this stellar performance by these two startups that Fashion & Lifestyle category on whole became the most applauded category.
- BYJU’s from edtech category was the most efficient startup in 2017. It is interesting to note that BYJU’s was sixth from the bottom in social media activity with just 78 posts throughout the year. However, the startup received 9.1 Mn engagement which might be due to its or social ad budget.
Most Engaging Category (Video)
Fashion & lifestyle ecommerce startups created the most engaging video. This category received a whopping 10 million video engagements per brand in 2017.
- Myntra was the most engaging brand in video content for Fashion & Lifestyle category. Myntra got 94.94 Mn video engagements in 2017, followed by Koovs and Ola.
Replies
Hyperlocal ecommerce startups were most responsive, followed by travel & marketplace and home furniture startups. On the other side of the spectrum, responses from real estate, edtech, and sexual wellness startups remained low.
- Bigbasket was the most responsive startup in the hyperlocal segment. It responded 21,087 times to its audience in 2017, followed by RedBus and Grofers.
Hashtag Analysis
Top three brands in Hashtag analysis were PolicyBazaar, Travel Triangle and Nature Basket.
Keyword Analysis
Hyperlocal ecommerce category used contest related keywords in 16.63% of the total number of tweets during the said period. Horizontal ecommerce category used content related keywords in 9% of its 6381 tweets.
- Top 3 startups with the highest percentage of contest-related tweets were Shopclues, Nature Basket and Grofers.
- Top 3 startups with the highest percentage of cashback related tweets were Paytm, FreeCharge and Oxigen wallet.
- Top 3 categories with the highest percentage of Brand Recall Keywords were Mswipe, Koovs, and FreeCharge.
Other Key Findings From The Social Media Report
- 60% of all content on social media was shared on Twitter, followed by Facebook, Google+, and YouTube.
- Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social media channels. 96 startups had the Facebook presence while 97 had Twitter profiles.
- The overall activity of all the 100 startups decreased gradually from Q1 to Q4.
- On the contrary, overall engagement of all the 100 startups increased gradually from Q1 to Q4.
- The video engagement share also increased as 2017 progressed.
- Top three startups using highest number of hashtags focused on brand messaging.
- Hyperlocal Ecommerce showed the affinity towards contests and contest-related keyword strategy.
- Fintech startups focused more on cashback offers.
The social media trends revealed in the VAIZLE report clearly highlight that even if the Indian startups boast of getting traffic on their platforms through organic marketing, the discount is inevitable. Although the rise in the standard of living has pushed the Indian consumers towards better quality adoption, still the primary purchasing behaviour revolves around ‘how great the discount is’ phenomenon only. With the growth of the Indian consumer Internet industry, particularly the ecommerce, will the Indian consumer too evolve to take a step ahead of discounts like his western counterparts in the coming times, will certainly be an interesting development to watch.