From sourcing across diverse geographical regions to ordering online, technology has completely transformed business procurement giving it a digital facelift and eliminating the distance virtually. One of the success stories from India is IndiaMART which propelled businesses by connecting buyers and sellers online, easing B2B procurement. In an exclusive interview with Express Computer, Amarinder Dhaliwal, Chief Product Officer at IndiaMART highlights the company’s innovative approach to enhance customer experience by leveraging GenAI solutions.
IndiaMART believes in empowering businesses with tech-powered solutions. How exactly are you faring on that front?
Over the years, IndiaMART has developed into more than just a listing platform to one-stop destination for business-related needs of MSMEs. Our wide range of services, integrated with AI/ML solutions, include behaviour-based matchmaking, free online visibility, a CRM platform called Lead Manager, support in catalogue enhancement and numerous other business enablement SaaS platforms that meet a variety of business needs.
Catalogue management: Our teams invest substantial time in understanding buyers’ behaviour and the specifications they look at while submitting any requirement on the platform, such as quality, volume, package type, brand preferences, and more. These insights are further used to improve sellers’ online catalogue and make it content-rich. With our in-house tech, sellers can also enhance the visual appeal (better photos, automatic background removal, cropping) of the overall catalogue.
LMS: The Lead Management System (LMS) helps provide a conversational commerce experience to the buyers, leading to more meaningful engagements. Integrated with advanced AI solutions, LMS understands the context of conversations and suggests appropriate replies to initiate and sustain dialogue. For instance, an apparel supplier receiving an enquiry will see suggestions such as, “How many pieces are needed?” or “What fabric is preferred?” “Are there any specific colours?” and so on. Currently, more than 60 percent of the messages on the platform are sent via the Suggested Replies module.
Improvement in ‘Search’: We use AI to enhance search capabilities as close to 65 lakh misspellings and Hinglish searches happen on our platform every month. With a comprehensive understanding of Indian languages, including common misspellings and even ‘Hinglish’ or other multilingual searches, we ensure precise search results, simplifying the process for users to find what they need effortlessly.
How are you leveraging advanced technologies to strengthen connections between suppliers and buyers?
We heavily invest in understanding buyers’ behaviour on the platform and make their journey as seamless as possible. These buyer insights are further used to educate the sellers and make tech interventions within the platform. We also maintain transparency through comprehensive supplier catalogue pages and trust-building measures like user ratings, reviews, and TrustSEAL Verification.
Today, over 60 percent of website traffic comes from tier II and tier I cities. We have introduced vernacular and voice-based search and Hinglish search on the platform. Today, the voice search is available in nine languages: English, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, Bangla, and Malayali. This helps in strengthening better connections between buyers and sellers (~134 million replies and call backs handled in Q1-FY25 alone). Another key component that ensures a strong connection between the buyers and sellers is our LMS. It allows users to manage all their leads in one place, chat with the buyers, send quotations, and access buyer’s history. Thus, sellers can tailor their quotations for individual buyers.
In today’s time where a buyer has millions of options to explore and purchase from, responsiveness becomes extremely important. Therefore, we introduced IM Insta for sellers which supports the integration of buyers’ WhatsApp responses with sellers’ LMS. The WhatsApp integration helps increase buyer responsiveness threefold compared to any other form of communication.
The customer experience sector has transformed with the digitalisation wave, especially after the onset of GenAI. In what ways is IndiaMART deploying GenAI solutions to enhance customer experience?
We have been integrating AI long before it was a buzzword. Customer experience continues to remain a core priority for us – both from a technology and human intervention standpoint. This includes enhancement of our search capabilities, content enrichment across categories, and improvement in matchmaking accuracy while gaining a deeper understanding of user demands across languages and dialects.
The consistent volume of data fed into the AI algorithms helps improve the search capabilities. Our understanding of Indian languages, including frequent misspellings and even “Hinglish” or other multilingual searches, allows us to provide accurate search results, improving the overall user experience. The AI enhancement features help sellers to improve the visual appearance of their catalogue such as automatic background removal, cropping, increase in quality of image, and making it easier for buyers to evaluate the products.
We continue to study customer behaviour and preferences to enable smooth transactions resulting in higher levels of satisfaction and a rise in repeat users (almost 53 percent of users on the platform are repeat buyers). Our AI-powered conversational commerce allows for customised interactions in the LMS. The system studies buyer behaviour, nature of the requirement and suggests relevant automatic replies, helping sellers ensure a faster and better conversation with the buyer.
Further, as mentioned earlier, a bigger chunk of our website traffic comes from tier II cities and below, making it imperative to offer tech-enabled solutions in multiple vernacular languages more comfortable to users at the grassroots level. Our search functionality supports translation offers multilingual search options (supporting indic and voice-based search), Hinglish search (mix of Hindi and English), and understands common misspellings due to a comprehensive understanding of Indian languages.
How has technology adoption impacted the work environment or work culture at IndiaMART?
As the company embraces technology and explores solutions that can work better for our users, this also creates opportunities for learning and growth within the organisation. We have monthly programs such as QA Meet, Product Meet, Tech Learning Session, BI Meet, etc. wherein new technologies, product innovations, and emerging trends and achievements are showcased to the relevant stakeholders. This helps in ensuring continuous learning of newer technologies and fosters an innovative and creative culture.
In addition to the product team, our sales team connects with the sellers and customers on a regular basis. Our internal Mobile App for our employees -MERP (Mobile ERP solution) provides access to seller information, their entire history, and their journey with IndiaMART, just at the click of a button. This helps the team to conduct a meaningful, informed, and efficient conversation with the customer, putting them in an empowering position and imbibing the spirit of confidence within the organisation.
With the likes of e-commerce rising by the day, how does IndiaMART plan to further expand its market?
IBEF, in a report, cited that India’s Business-to-Business (B2B) online marketplace is expected to be a US$ 200 billion opportunity by 2030 and technology will have a significant role to play in this. Increased focus on customer experience, hyper personalisation, mobile-first, and voice-commerce, will be a couple of key trends that will drive the growth of the sector. At IndiaMART, we continue to explore AI-enabled solutions that can help us leverage these trends better, and make matchmaking on our platform even more efficient, streamlined, and automated.
Our goal is to make business doing easy and help buyers find the right products and services. The objective is to create a seamless experience, through optimising search and improving product discovery.