GOSF 2014: Analyzing Great Online Shopping Festival as it happens - Part 2

The hoopla is over.
The ho-halla is here to stay!!

Analyzing GOSF 2014: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly! 

The Good: There are a lot of good things about this year's GOSF. Bigger than ever, this year's GOSF - the three day online shopping extravaganza that ran from 10th Dec to 12th Dec saw higher participation than ever both from brands and from consumers. In the third edition, GOSF started in 2012, it involved 450 online partners from segments as diverse as kitchen and groceries to automobiles and real estate. Numerous marketing campaigns not only during the actual festival days but also in run-up to the event were launched by several brands to attract consumers' attention. 

Aditya Birla Money’s finance management company MyUniverse was the lead sponsor for the event with 14 brand partners namely Asian Paints, Jet Airways, Kindle, Micromax, HP, Ask Me, CraftsVilla, Cox & Kings, Goibibo, Big Bazaar, KOOVs, Trendin, Lakme and Lenovo each of whom delighted one consumer each day (selected in most cases through a Twitter Follow and Hash Tag campaign) with 14 minutes of free shopping worth Rs. 2.5 lacs from Nov 25 to December 8th.
Their was an exclusive launch corner dedicated for new product launches during the three day festival. Some of the notable product launches included Infinity i.e. Airtel Digital TV on Demand WiFi Dongle, Google Chromecast, Motorola Nexus 6, Lenovo Yoga Tablet and Auxus Rist.

Further, their was a separate section named 299 Corner targeting first time buyers and price sensitive consumers which showcased products priced at Rs. 299/- or less with free shipping and cash on delivery options in most cases.


Did the hoopla had any impact?

Well the hoopla was definitely much more than just a hoopla. Given the growing number of internet users in India and the e-commerce boom there is definitely room for such an event. All in all, it was a good line-up of products and offers with consumer products ranging a few hundreds to costly real estate offerings worth lacs of rupees from companies like Purvankara and Tata Housing. Going by the reports the sales exceeded the wildest expectations with Tata Housing seeing 10000 flats being booked on the first day of GOSF. Similar was the experience of leading construction company Purvankara which reported more than 5000 inquiries and 507 bookings during the 3-day period. Infact the share price of the company saw an uptrend after the news got spread in the market.

Another report from mobile wallet MobiKwik suggests that they encountered more than 15000 transactions by noon on the first day of sales with rising number of transactions on subsequent days.

Any detailed report regarding the traffic during the festival is yet to be published by Google or by third-party sources. However the number of internet users in India is rising fast. The number of mobile internet users is also increasing at a fast pace. According to a recent report by IAMAI, mobile internet users are growing at a steady rate, with 159 million mobile internet users in October, estimated to reach 173 million by the end of December 2014. No. of online shoppers alone is expected to touch 100 million mark by 2016, as per several estimates. If these figures are anything to go by, India as a country has huge potential for those interested in monetizing opportunities internet space.

The article would be incomplete if I do not mention that India's most popular online shopping portal Flipkart chose to not participate in GOSF 2014. Instead the company ran its own version of Bip App Shopping Days - a special discount festival that ran between Dec, 8th - Dec, 12th 2014. The reason quoted by unidentified sources is that Flipkart had made plans of app based promotions well in advance and hence didn't want to have two major promotional plans running in advance. However, in my opinion there may be two reasons behind this decision:

a) It would be safe to assume that majority of people participating in GOSF, at the end of the day, are regular online shoppers who are well aware of Flipkart. Hence from the awareness and top of the mind recall perspective Flipkart wouldn't have gained any substantial result from participating in GOSF especially in the light of the fact that they anyway have good marketing budgets and keep doing several campaigns all round the year

b) Flipkart's Big Billion Day sale, however big a failure you might call it, did give Flipkart huge insights into the online shopping behaviour of Indian consumers. Having participated twice in the earlier versions of GOSF, Flipkart anyway has a good amount of data and might not see GOSF as a must attend event

The Bad: Logistics! They top the chart of complaints. I myself purchased a couple of items from sites as diverse as established big players to new entrants, general shopping sites to niche ones but for almost 15 days the status for my orders said - No information. The order had been placed. The order was successful. But there wasn't any information on whether the item has been shipped or not and the expected delivery dates. Infact from one of the sites I got an email saying I had the option of getting a refund as there was expected a further delay of around 2 or more weeks - making it a month from the date of purchase. Many of my friends and colleagues had similar stories to tell.

Impulse purchases are best enjoyed when you can start using the purchased item as soon as possible because impulse purchases are generally made for low risk items for which people would rather pay a slightly higher amount then wait for an unidentified time period.

Now this is a big problem. You roll out exciting offers in the market, invite customers to go all out and do crazy shopping for 72 hours - only to keep them waiting for crazy hours of unidentified number! While some may say it doesn't matter as the purchase has been made and nobody wants to take that extra effort of cancelling an offer but that is just not true. There is a high chance of people not participating with such enthusiasm in the next edition of GOSF after having faced such issues. Also, for the sites who are using GOSF as a launch platform it might ultimately cause them to generate an unfavorable image in the mind of their initial set of consumers.

Hence if you are planning to participate in the next edition of GOSF, please make sure you have done enough planning to take care of the post purchase phases as well. Cause at the end, the overall shopping is experience is what will matter the most!

GOSF 2014: Analyzing Google Online Festival Challenge as it happens

Google Online Shopping Festival - India's very own online shopping festival on the lines of Black Friday Shopping festival in the US will be held from 10 to 12 Dec this year. More than 450 online partners are expected to share their best deals during the 3 day hoo-haa.

Multiple campaigns have been going on at www.gosf.in in the run up to the event and companies are rolling out exciting offers to lure the customers. There has been a series of 14 minutes of free shopping offer that started on 25 Nov 2014 and ran up to 08 Dec 2014 under which each day a new brand from the total list of 14 partner brands have been offering new ways for winning 14 min of free shopping to the lucky customers. Use of Twitter in most of these contest has been notable with more of less every single one of these brands asking the consumers to follow their Twitter page to enter into the contest and then asking the consumer to share their opinion/quotes etc. with relation to the products offered by the brand.

Today I received an email from eBay saying:

GOSF comes early on eBay.in | Flat Rs.100 Off Coupon inside | Shop Now!

Folks at eBay: Great that you are starting early but seriously do you really want to classify this as a GOSF offer? I mean my inbox is almost full with brands including yours offering better offers all these while when there was no GOSF buzz. Please reconsider your decision to participate or your offers, cause if this you are spending your marketing budget on GOSF with such offers you are better off continuing with your regular promotions.

Moving onto PREFERRED PARTNER Aditya Birla Money MyUniverse - Guys, the amount of spam that you generate every single week with your 70% off on 5 year plan and Sunday is a saving day on MyUniverse is equal to the spam generated by five online shopping sites put together. We have had enough of it. Please either drop the subscription price itself or open up some new features at the same price. And please, seriously please, do not come up with a new good looking banner Ad (like you always do) with the same old bogus offer during GOSF. Yours is a good product yaar. Spend some money on educating people how to make the most of it rather than just focusing on driving the subscriptions.

We will add more stuff as the GOSF rolls out tomorrow and in coming days. Follow this blog if you find the article interesting!

Update DDA Housing Scheme 2014 Refund/Money back

As per reports DDA is expected to return the deposit amount of Rs. 100,000/- (Rupees One Lakh) by end of this month i.e. 24 Dec, 2014. Though initially DDA has said that it will return the security deposit of Rs. 100,000/- (One Lakh rupees) of unsuccessful applications within three months of holding the draw of lots, it is now aiming at returning the amount by 24th Dec 2014.

As per the information available with us people who had filled their forms using SBI have started getting their money back. We have asked HDFC bank on the status of payments and as per their response demand drafts have been sent on the residential addresses of the applicants who filed their applications through HDFC Bank. Some online forums suggest that applicants who registered using SBH too have received refund payments.

DDA generates a significant amount of interest on the registration amount it collects from the applicants. This amount is used for DDA’s housing and other projects. As per news articles it is DDA vice-chairman Balvinder Kumar's decision that DDA is aiming to return the registration amount within a month.

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) had mentioned it in their brochure at annexure “B” that DDA will refund registration money through the nodal branches of bank at which applicants have submitted the form either online or offline mode

If you are one of the unsuccessful applicants, you don’t need to visit the bank branches for refund of registration money as the registration money will be credited back to your account automatically through the nodal branch of the bank through which you have submitted the application form.
However, if you do not received your money within 90 days then you are suggested to contact nodal officer of the bank as given in annexure B of the brochure. DDA or the bank will not entertain application for refund, loss/mutilation and non-encashment of refund cheque one year after the closure of this scheme.

This announcement comes as a relief for many applicants who have their money stuck with DDA as a non-performing asset cause DDA will not be paying any interest to the applicants for this period. However, there are rumors that DDA will be paying 8 percent interest if there is delay in repaying the money back to the applicants. For applicants who had availed financing schemes from participating banks it means that they will need to pay lesser interest to the bank if the terms and conditions of the concerned financing agreement allow so.

For more details you may refer:
http://profit.ndtv.com/news/your-money/article-dda-housing-scheme-unsuccessful-applicants-may-get-refund-by-december-24-714046

Online transfer claim of EPF by Employee's Provident Fund Organization (EPFO)

Good news for all the people who have been wanting to transfer their PF amount from previous employment accounts to the current one but couldn't do it due to the hassles of doing it manually and all kind of problematic experiences that you get to hear from your colleagues.

Employee's Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) has launched a new system to facilitate online submission of transfer claims by members with an objective to make the transfer process transparent, efficient and comfortable.

The process is beneficial not just for the employees but also for the employers. Under the previous system the employers were supposed to send the physical papers of PF transfer claims raised by the employees to the EPFO office  with their recommendation. However, under the new online system employers can verify the details of the claims using the EPFO portal for employers.

The EPFO office also sends reminder SMSes to the employers regarding pending transfer requests from the employees. This will lead to quick action by the employers and make them more accountable. Employees too can track the status of their transfer application online and see who is responsible for the delay, if any.

Pre-requisites/Eligibility: Who can transfer PF online?

For transferring your EPF amount online from a previous employer to the current employer the following conditions need to be fulfilled:

• Both previous and present member IDs (PF Account No.) should be available in  EPFO database
• The employers should have registered the digital signature certificate of their authorized signatories with EPFO. This is mandatory for employers to be able to verify claim papers online by digitally signing it off

If both previous and current employers have not registered their digital signatures online the transfer process will need to be completed offline.

Employees can check their eligibility for claiming online EPF transfer here: http://memberclaims.epfoservices.in/check_eligibility.php

Information that you need for initiating the transfer:

• Your bank account no. along with IFSC code
• PF account numbers from both the employer. You would find this on your payslip. The format is like GN/GGN/0012345/000/XXXXX i.e. State Code/Regional PF Office Code/Establishment Code/Extension/Employee PF number. The Extension generally is 000 and can be left blank in most of the cases.
• Date of joining and leaving the previous establishment and date of joining of current establishment. It generally gets pre-filled on submitting the PF number however if doesn't you would need to provide the same
• Date of birth and name of spouse/father as mentioned in the company records

 
 Below are the steps for requesting a PF transfer as an Employee:

1. Log in to the online transfer claim portal here: http://memberclaims.epfoservices.in/
    Note: If this is the first time you are using online EPFO portal, you will need to register and create
    your profile here http://members.epfoservices.in/employee_reg_form.php

2. After succesful login you will see the following page

3. Fill in the Part A details i.e. Personal information as shown in the above picture

4. Fill in Part B details i.e. details of the previous account which is to be transferred. Once the details have been entered, click on the grey button labeled  "Click Here To Get Details"

On doing so the details of you EPF account will get auto-filled as per the details available with EPFO office. If you find any of the field to be blank, please manually submit the respective information.

If the information in the next five fields is non-blank but incorrect, you can approach your employer to correct this data. To do the correction, press the "Following information is incorrect" button. A request letter shall be generated for further submission to your employer (Important: This claim can not be submitted digitally).

5. Fill in Part C details i.e. details of the current account to which the amount is to be credited. Once the details have been entered, click on the grey button labeled  "Click Here To Get Details"

 If all the details are correct select the claim attestation option. You can select either the previous or the current employer for this attestation. In case of attestation by the previous employer, time taken in settlement will be relatively less.

Finally, you will be able to process the claim online only if the employers have registered their digital signatures online with the EPFO office. If both previous and current employers have not registered their digital signatures online the transfer process will need to be completed offline.

Once you have successfully submitted the EPF transfer claim, the application status can be tracked using the "View Status of Transfer Claim" link under the "Claim" head of the menu bar as shown below:

For more information visit: http://www.epfindia.com/employee_OTCP.html