Flipkart follows WeChat model, to launch one app for everything

With the arrival of new app everyday in the league of thousands other apps, there seems new urge to be one-app-for-everything and everything-in-one-app for etailers. Working on the similar line of thought, Flipkart is all set to launch an app that can be used for everything from booking a cab or ordering food to planing a travel.

India's largest online marketplace has planned to launch an app, based on WeChat model, by this year end. The firm has been in talks with food, cab and travel aggregators for its app-of-apps. This will boost customer loyalty while also monetising the huge volumes of customer data it has access to and adding channels of revenue. And the platform will act as a distribution channel for these services," Prakash Sikaria, senior director of monetisation and new initiatives at Flipkart, was quoted as saying by ET.

This is initiated by Flipkart's new chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy. Former Tiger Global executive Krishnamurthy was elevated as the new chief executive officer of the company earlier this year. In April this year, Flipkart raised $1.4 billion from Tencent, Microsoft and eBay Inc in the biggest-ever fund raising.

Bangalore-based company has raised close to $4.7 billion in 11 rounds, mostly from international investors such as Tiger Global Accel Partners, DST Global and Baillie Gifford. Flipkart was launched by two former Amazon employees Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007.

According to experts in the space, this will allow Flipkart, which has large consumer base, huge advantage over its competitors. Flipkart is competing fiercely with rival Amazon India, which has been aggressively becoming popular with the population through its Prime membership offering.

Amazon has committed $5 billion influx for Indian market. Flipkart, being a homegrown marketplace, does want to utilise the consumerbase advantage it has. Through this single app for multiple use, will hit chord with for customers in low-band width areas.

For daily essentials, Flipkart will have its own operations. The company plans on launching grocery and fast-moving consumer goods offerings soon.

WeChat or Weixin as known in China, released in 2011, claims to have 1 billion users worldwide, 938 million monthly active users (MAUs). However, It has not grown as much as in non-Chinese-speaking regions.

For its parent company Tencent, WeChat proved as one of the key contributors to a 47% year-over-year increase in online advertising revenues generated in Q1 2017.  Tencent continues to rank as the No. 1 brand in China, with a value of $106.18 billion in 2017.

WeChat, allows its users to pay bills and order goods and services on the chat platform using their inbuilt wallets. Flipkart's PhonePe will pay an important role in the execution of this strategy.