E-commerce platforms are in their prime form today. Leading e-commerce portals like Myntra, Flipkart or Amazon makes crores of rupees through the sale of its products. The main reasons for their popularity are their wide range of choices, great discounts, and the availability of the best products from their home. However, as a consumer, one may get confused with the wide variety of choices they get from each site. The solution to this question has been created by Gaurav Kumar by inventing FlipShope, a google extension which helps to track the best products while online shopping.
Interview Times had a great conversation with Gaurav Kumar who told us more about the working of FlipShope. This is how the interview went-
Can you brief about yourself to the readers?
Currently, I am the CEO of FairPe, co-founder of FlipShope, and is also working on several other pioneering initiatives. I always had the burning desire to do something of my own. Moreover, a business mindset only added fuel to the fire. I dabbled in everything possible to hone and sharpen my understanding of finance and business. Solving problems on Chegg, selling Flipkart and Amazon coupons, and leveraging affiliate marketing were some of the activities I did rigorously in my initial years to grab the knowledge of the market.
I always believe in the philosophy, “It’s not about the results; getting the process right is the real deal.”
This belief has empowered me to achieve a lot when most people are just aimlessly cruising by in life.
When did the idea of Flipshope come to your mind?
In 2014, during my second year at IIT Kharagpur as an undergraduate student, the entrepreneurship bug hit me.
The online shopping ecosystem was far from perfect. The yawning gulf between streamlined customer experience and contented retailers was quite evident.
I wasn’t studying Computer Science and wasn’t aware of the technical know-how to get started. But this shortcoming did not deter me. I roped in batchmates <X>, <Y>, and thus began the journey of FlipShope. Like any other venture built ground-up, my buddies and I had a roller-coaster ride: it took us almost two years to come up with a real MVP. But then trials and tribulations make a man. Six years later, FlipShope is now being used by more than 150,000 people daily for grabbing the best online deals.
What is the USP of Flipshope?
Flipshope has features like auto-application of promo codes on 300+ websites, a price graph that lets you track price fluctuations of over 100 million products for the last three months. Moreover, it also has a reservation of products only available in flash sales, and a lot more, FlipShope is paving the way for the next revolution in e-commerce. Basically, Flipshope is a chrome extension that helps users to buy when shop online.
How has been the growth of Flipshope so far?
The journey of six years has been incredible. We had our shares of ups and downs, but today I can proudly say that Flipshope has 20 lakhs total download and two lakhs daily active users for four years.
Amidst this pandemic scenario, do you think the E-commerce website will be the future’s central shopping platform?
Definitely, yes. The way the world is getting digitalized, the concept of shopping will take a sharp U-turn in the next decade or so.
Any set-off plans for Flipshope in the future?
So far, I haven’t thought of the future yet. I just want to make the base of Flipshope stronger in the upcoming years.
