Snapdeal's Shopo Shuts Down; Roposo, Kraftly See Surge In Sellers

Snapdeal shut one of its verticals last week called Shopo which featured multiple small sellers on its platform.

Shopo was acquired by Snapdeal in 2013 and the pre-acquisition handicraft company said in its blog post that it will be shutting down on 10th February 2017, citing reasons such as the C2C market not being robust enough for Shopo to be economically viable, although the Indian e-commerce industry is growing and P2P sales are working for platforms such as Kraftly and Roposo.

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Saahil Goel, co-founder of BigFoot Retail Solutions and incidentally of its three product companies Kraftly, KartRocket and ShipRocket, said ‘Kraftly, is a C2C e-commerce platform that connects indie sellers and small boutiques with a social network oriented buyer base.’’

"Shop sign ups per week on our platform have increased from 1100 / week to around 2000 / week. Listings from new sellers average around 7 / seller. So listings have also jumped to 14,000 / week from new sellers from previous 7,000 / week. We will have to wait and see what the reason is, whether the registration is organic," Saahil told Business Insider. “But the Shopo connection is a strong possibility.”

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Another fashion startup called ‘Roposo’ sees the shutdown as unfortunate as they feel that the same sellers sell on different platforms and more players are great for the market and also for teaching sellers how to sell online.

Mayank Bhangadia, Co-founder, Roposo told Business Insider that they have also seen an increase in their seller activity, “The number of sellers has doubled from 4000 to 8000.

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There’s a 60% increase in the no of products added per day on the platform

The time spent by users on Roposo's shop section, called Roposo Bazaar, has increased by 30% because of new incoming products.’’
Whether peer-to-peer selling is a nascent market to get into or not, the other start-ups have surely gained from Snapdeal’s loss.