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Meanbuy: The future of online shopping

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Mohammed Sameer, FounderThe goal of every single e-commerce retailer is to find a solid way that leads them to improve their business. Personalized and segmented emails, delivering great user experience and customer support publishing good performing ad and the list goes on. All of these efforts have a great impact on the success of an online business. Added to this is the effective pricing strategy through flexible pricing that retailers use to boost e-commerce success. While flexible pricing is not a completely new approach, e-commerce retailers have been using it more of late. Most of them were randomly optimizing their prices and changing them manually based on internal decisions. However because of the increase in online price competition, and thanks to greater market intelligence and sophisticated flexible pricing software, e-commerce retailers have realized the importance and the impact of flexible pricing on their businesses. Also, the price sensitivity of customers has led e-commerce players to employ flexible pricing to influence consumer purchase decisions and optimize revenue.

One such company is Hyderabad based Meanbuy, one of India's first flexible pricing e-commerce platforms where the consumer decides the price and future shipping date is fixed to that. Meanbuy is the future of online shopping. It practices flexible pricing and flexible delivery dates. It lets the customers Pay What They Want to Pay on a variety of retail products, ranging from women's accessories to consumer electronics on meanbuy.com. Its disruptive patent pending flexible pricing technology is based on multidimensional consumer behaviourism exemplified by today's online shopper.

The interesting thing about Meanbuy is that it not only benefits the customers but also holds several advantages for vendors. "Retailers want their products to move as fast as possible at the same time, they need to manage their inventory and prices based on the demand. When we spoke to retailers about the concept of Meanbuy, we had an overwhelming response. With the variety of delivery dates on orders generated through Meanbuy, our vendors are able to forecast their expected inventory needs, and also introduce new products on a preorder basis, using the `Wait and Save' option. The flexibility of Meanbuy benefits everyone who is a part of the cycle. We have over 200 vendors with us now, and the number is constantly growing,"explicates Mohammed Sameer, Founder, Meanbuy.

What led to the Foundation of Meanbuy
The journey of Meanbuy dates back to 2014. Sameer accompanied by a few of his friends was in Shanghai China when he witnessed the prominence of e-commerce there. What they failed to figure out was the future of online shopping in the coming times. This triggered Sameer and after a thorough market study on the recent trends and few brainstorming sessions, he realized that flexible pricing and delivery date could be a viable option to shake things up a bit. This eventually led to the foundation of Meanbuy a comprehensive platform for customers to choose how they shop, whether it is buying instantly waiting to save or to pick up an order from the store after freezing it.

Initially, Sameer and team were sceptical about the acceptability of their idea among the consumers. More over, introducing a platform that asks the customers to wait was an uphill battle for them. Throwing light on the challenges Sameer narrates, "We have had to fight against the existing competitors since e-commerce isn't exactly an undiscovered territory. Customers had expectations of us similar to those from our competition, but we are here to do what is right for everyone. At times, we needed to put our foot down to some things. We have come out shining bright amongst our rivals, purely because of product quality and our concept of price flexibility."

It took customers a little while to understand why waiting for a better price was even an option. But as its presence grew stronger and gained their trust, it began to get a steady increase in orders. "Our marketing needed tweaking many times since this was a truly
unique concept. We had many trial-and-error situations, but finally figured out what would help the customer understand who we are,"he smiles.

An Array of Customized Products
There is a multitude of customizable products available on Meanbuy suitable for various occasions. The company caters to orders for corporate gifting, birthdays, weddings, festivals and even single pieces for personalized gifts. "When you order a customized product on Meanbuy, you can put in your preferred delivery date, such as a birthday party or the day of the wedding, and your order will be delivered exactly when you need it. This way, you don't need to worry about picking up order last minute, or storing a large number of gifts for days before the event. Similarly you can order a present for a birthday well in advance and you can rest assured that it'll be delivered on time,"informs Sameer.

There is a multitude of customizable products available on Meanbuy suitable for various occasions. The company caters to orders for corporate gifting, birthdays weddings,festivals and even single pieces for personalized gifts


The product model that Meanbuy follows emphasizes on two categories of clients the customer and the vendor. It aims to benefit both sides of the transaction. It has an ever expanding product range for the customers and offers lucrative deals throughout the year. For vendors, it offers an interface with which they can receive immediate updates on new orders, notifications about upcoming delivery dates and stock management tools. With the help of this, vendors can know exactly when the product is meant to be shipped out, and our delivery professionals will be there on time to pick up the product and ship it out to the customer. "In a nutshell, our mantra is `when everyone benefits, everyone grows."And we work round the clock to make ensure this," he avers.

Towards a Bright Future
Being a fairly new entrant in the market, Meanbuy began with the basics. While initially, it was a one-man initiative, later people joined the firm to take up various responsibilities. Over the years, the company has grown to an 11 member team small yet nimble. They are planning on spreading out into the rural areas next to cover all the corners of the country. The plan is to empower entrepreneurs from humble backgrounds.

From the beginning with the basics to carving a niche in the industry, Meanbuy has come a long way from where it had begun. In the coming years, the company plans on opening up to orders from across the globe as Indian products have a great demand worldwide. "Our Wait and Save concept can fit in perfectly for international orders, and will help our local craftsmen send their goods out to customers all over the world. We are prepping the site at this for expansion, and also working on gathering up vendors for all types of products that would be of interest to customers from other countries," he concludes.

Mohammed Sameer, Founder
Sameer, an experienced Chief Executive Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the consumer services industry is skilled in Negotiation, Business Planning, Import, Sales Management and Sourcing, Strong business development professional. He has explored new business opportunities for the company. Currently working on a disruptive e- commerce marketplace (www.meanbuy.in), which can change the traditional discount and sale concept. Planning to expand the current platform in various countries and explore the opportunities that could be benefited in the both various streams to buyers and sellers.

Jeroen
Jeroen completed his MSc degrees at Texas A&M University in both Engineering and Mathematics, where after he utilized these skills working as a commodities trader and quantitative analyst at a financial institution. Due to his exposure to pricing financial instruments in real time, he became more so interested in exploring pricing inefficiencies, not only those that exists in financial market instruments, but other areas of application as well. Next to his day-to-day job, he spent countless hours every day researching flexible pricing and found there to be significant pricing inefficiencies in the e-commerce we know today. That's when he knew he wanted to transition his career to a different direction. As a result, he applied his specialization in algorithmic processes to help create Meanbuy's Wait & Save engine.

Wouter
Wouter has a MSc in Quantitative Finance and has strong electronic trading and model building experience different techniques and facets explored in his trading days are built in the Wait & Save model. When it comes to logistics Wouter worked closely with different industry experts on the ever changing rules of logistics and applied the knowledge from his undergrad in Logistics towards the Wait & Save model.