Neeraj Jain, Chief Executive Officer, Zopper
Neeraj Jain serves as the Co-Founder and CEO of Zopper - India’s largest hyper local mobile marketplace that enables patrons to discover the best prices for products by connecting local sellers with buyers. His mission to make Zopper a tech giant that simplifies the lives of consumers through its ever-evolving innovative technology. Neeraj holds a B.Tech in Electronics Engineering from the University of Lucknow and a PGDM in Management from the prestigious IIM, Ahmedabad. He kick started his professional journey with Hughes Software Systems where he worked on a diverse range of telecom-related software products. In conversation with Dominic Rebello, and a firm believer in the adage, ‘Great people make great organisations’, Neeraj believes this dictum defines the success of Zopper
What drives you?
Passion. One needs be really passionate about what one is doing. One will inevitably face lots of challenges when trying to build something. It is one's passion which keeps him going when everything else is not looking good. One should also be able to build a very good team to be a successful entrepreneur.
How big is the potential for a business like yours; any statistics to compare with international standards?
The business potential is humungous. We are targeting a $50 billion Electronics Retail Market which is growing at a CAGR of 20%. We work with 15,000 small retailers and all the big retail chains like The Mobile Store, Croma, Reliance Digital etc.
How do you plan to scale up; raise funds through seed or venture capital or simply grow the old fashioned way through rising turnovers?
We are not in the market to raise more money as we will be generating free cash flows before the end of this financial year. Till that happens, we have more than enough capital to last us for next 18-24 months, so we don't have any need to raise external capital.
Who would primarily be your consumer audience?
We primarily cater to smartphone and net savvy modern young Indians who are on Internet. People who are keen on constantly upgrading their lifestyle and are in market for buying electronics and mobiles etc.
When it comes to shopping for these items (or any non-impulse purchase category) they exhibit the traditional expectations of an Indian shopper – buying after verifying all relevant options and checking all other aspects. Zopper seamlessly blends all these characteristics that we have experienced while going to our nearby market, physically checking out items, comparing prices, assuring oneself of surety of purchase etc.
Where do you see yourself five years down the road?
We are very bullish on the Zopper hyper local model being the ideal e-commerce model for India. We see ourselves as the largest Electronics e-commerce Offline-Online marketplace in India in next 5 years. The way we are trying to bring the entire Electronics ecosystem to an online platform; from Discovery to Fulfillment to Ownership, no one else has done it anywhere in the world. Zopper would be present in 100+ cities in 5 years, with 50,000+ local electronics retailers. This should give us 10% market share of entire Electronics market in India.