Cxo of the week: Prakash Gurumoorthy, General Manager - EMEA & APAC at VTEX

VTEX is the global enterprise digital commerce platform where brands and retailers run their world of commerce. VTEX puts its customers' businesses on a fast path to growth with a complete commerce, marketplace, and OMS solution. It helps global companies build, manage, and deliver native and advanced B2B, B2C, and marketplace commerce experiences with unprecedented time to market and without complexity.

Prakash Gurumoorthy is the General Manager of VTEX APAC. He is responsible for India and APAC’s regional P&L, Customer Experience, Growth Engineering teams and culture. He started his career with GSK and wentto work with Astra Zeneca, Photo Infotech and Cognizant Technology Solutions in various roles. Prakash is a graduate from BITS, Pilani and an MBA in Marketing & Operations from K J Somaiya Institute of Management. Prior to joining VTEX, he built the iconic BORN Group, an award winning global agency that helps brands with digital transformation. Prakash built the global production arm for BORN integrating the 3 specialisms (Creative Services, Content Production and Commerce Enablement) servicing over 150+ customers/brands through 600+ digital transformation programs. TechMahindra acquired BORN in 2019.

Recently we have engaged in an interview with Prakash Gurumoorthy, General Manager - EMEA & APAC at VTEX. He talked about his business operations and what are the plans for future expansion and much more.

Introduction.

VTEX  is the global enterprise digital commerce platform where brands and retailers run their world of commerce. VTEX puts its customers' businesses on a fast path to growth with a complete commerce, marketplace, and OMS solution. It helps global companies build, manage, and deliver native and advanced B2B, B2C, and marketplace commerce experiences with unprecedented time to market and without complexity.  Last year, the company was listed on NYSE.

Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and its offerings.

VTEX is a 20-year old global enterprise digital commerce platform for enterprise brands and retailers. VTEX enables merchants to deploy, optimize, test and scale advanced B2C and B2B commerce experience through a composable and complete Commerce. Apart from the company being listed on NYSE, we have also been named a Visionary by Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce for the last 3 years.

Services that we offer: 

Digital Commerce Platform

Marketplace & Seller Management

Order Management System

VTEX IO Development Platform

Going far beyond just an ecommerce solution, VTEX has been helping brands and retailers globally drive rapid and efficient growth. The company enables brands and retailers to achieve faster time to market, reach their customers across any channel, and uncover new growth areas.

As a leader in digital commerce platforms, VTEX is trusted by more than 2,600 customers, including Carrefour, Colgate, Motorola, Stanley Black & Decker, and Whirlpool, having over 3,400 active online stores across 38 countries.

How has Covid-19 accelerated the transition to a Digital Commerce Platform?

The COVID-19 has put ecommerce at the forefront of retail and accelerated the wave of digital transformation. The pandemic crisis caused a drastic shift of demand toward digital commerce that is likely to continue in the coming years. The situation also led to a significant increase in online sales, with many retailers experiencing record-breaking online sales. Online commerce has become the preferred way for consumers to buy goods and services in today's world. The pandemic also increased the demand for online services, such as grocery delivery, food delivery, and telemedicine. This has led to the emergence of new digital commerce platforms and the expansion of existing ones, as businesses seek to meet the growing demand for online services. There are the emergence of new online stores with more consumers trying online shopping for the first time who never preferred online shopping before the pandemic. Retailers are working to put more emphasis and preference on online and mobile ordering and ensuring to create more intuitive user experiences.

Brands are investing in their ecommerce capabilities to allow customers to purchase products online. This includes creating online marketplaces, optimizing product listings, and improving delivery services. Social media has become even more important during the pandemic, as it allows brands to engage with customers in real-time and build communities. Brands are investing in social media marketing, influencer partnerships, and live-streaming events to connect with their audiences. Brands are also hosting virtual events to connect with customers and build brand awareness. This includes webinars, virtual conferences, and online product launches.

How does the VTEX platform help customers meet their delivery promises more efficiently and cost-effectively?

Our platform enables merchants to deploy, optimize, test and scale advanced B2C and B2B ecommerce experience through a composable and complete commerce, marketplace and OMS solution. The platform offers merchants across industries and regions unmatched time to revenue by delivering flexibility without unnecessary complexity. VTEX Order Management System helps customers optimize their ecommerce operation with a single view of inventory, seamlessly orchestrating orders across channels, and fulfilling orders from stores and distribution centers. Our distributed order management is built into the VTEX Digital Commerce Platform to unify your business and meet customer delivery promises more efficiently and cost effectively.

VTEX inStore is an app that allows merchants to integrate their online and physical sales channels, putting their customers at the center of the business. Using inStore, sales associates from the physical stores can serve customers in a personalized way and complete the entire sales process from helping to choose the right products to payment and delivery.

VTEX offers a pickup point in a physical location where customers can pick up their orders instead of having them delivered to their homes. When the customer fills in their address information when purchasing a product, the system displays all shipping options for that address, including the available pickup points. The customer can decide whether they want their order delivered to their home or collected at a pickup point, and they can also choose from the available pickup points.

What are the digital ecommerce trends for 2023 and beyond?

As worldwide ecommerce transactions are expected to rise to 70% from 60% now, niche marketplaces are emerging in areas including health, services, and manufacturing. To keep up, retailers will need to invest in their own marketplaces or have a significant presence on online stores owned by their peers. Some of the ecommerce trends that are expected to continue shaping the industry in 2023 and beyond are:

Digital-first Strategy for Retail

The digital revolution is not limited to online shopping. Physical outlets are also going digital, as retailers such as Ikea are implementing ‘just walk out’ shopping. This technology uses sensors, cameras, and RFIDs to track customers and their purchases in the store, and they are automatically billed at the checkout without having to queue up to have each item checked and priced. We predict that over a fifth of consumers worldwide will experience this frictionless shopping, which will transform the way we shop.

Brands They Trust

The importance of sustainability and environmental responsibility has never been higher. Over a fifth of all ecommerce experiences are expected to display sustainability information for products, services, and delivery options. Customers want to feel that their shopping choices are not burdening the environment, and transparency is key to building this trust.

Streaming Shopping Experience

One-to-many and one-to-one video streaming for shopping is already popular in many Asian ecommerce markets, and we foresee this trend becoming a major revenue driver in the Americas and EMEA. Merchants who adopt video sooner will come out ahead, as video has the potential to dominate ecommerce.

Autonomous delivery and AI

Finally, the autonomous delivery of ecommerce transactions globally is expected to reach over a tenth. Autonomous vehicles are already delivering products and food in China and the US. Businesses experimenting with autonomous ecommerce will need to evaluate their business model and the use of sensors or IoT and AI to predict customer orders to improve customer experience.

What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?

Our USP is that we are truly cloud-based and that we can bring our extensive experience from global market to the India market. We work with many global brands and have developed a highly capable technology platform that has helped brands expand internationally.

We also offer some interesting logistical tools. Learning from our global experiences, we have built in logistics models that can handle inventory, omnichannel sales, and multiple distribution centres in a simple and integrated way. We can also deliver, deploy and scale up rapidly, typically within three and a half months and we have done so for many clients.

How Open Network for Digital Commerce will help boost the retail sector in India?

Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is a new initiative launched by the Government of India to create a digital platform that connects all stakeholders in the retail sector, including retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, and logistics providers. According to Reuters, ONDC aims to raise ecommerce penetration from nearly 8 percent to 25 percent in the next two years. The aim of ONDC is to provide a digital commerce foundation that includes inventory management, logistics, and dispute resolution and make the ecommerce sector more inclusive, accessible and experience driven for all consumers and sellers. This will bring and integrate  small companies and startups together into the ecommerce ecosystem. ONDC was rolled out successfully  in 5 cities such as  Delhi, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Shillong, and Coimbatore. It provides better market access to sellers and small sellers and buyers from remote corners into the ecommerce framework by empowering them with digitization and providing opportunities that are available to big ecommerce players in the country. It will help streamline the supply chain process, making it more efficient and reducing the time and cost of delivering goods to retailers. This will enable retailers to receive goods faster and at a lower cost, which will help them compete more effectively in the market.

ONDC will create a unique digital identity for each product, which will help reduce the incidence of counterfeiting. This will give consumers greater confidence in the products they buy, which will ultimately boost sales for retailers. ONDC will ensure that buyers and sellers use the same platform for all online business payments, hence moving from a platform-centric to a network-centric model. ONDC will create a digital credit system that will enable retailers to access credit more easily and at a lower cost. This will help retailers expand their businesses and invest in new opportunities. ONDC offers a great opportunity for VTEX to align together for a digital first strategy and help merchants to increase their business profits.

What are your growth plans for the year 2023?

India’s e-retail market was estimated to be $50 billion in 2022, growing at 25% over 2021. By 2027, the market is expected to grow to $150–$170 billion, with up to 1 in 10 retail dollars spent online. The growing population of aspirational consumers is catapulting the retail sector’s growth in smaller cities and tier 2 & 3 markets. Retailers and brands are exploring the possibilities in tier 2 & 3 cities creating a demand for retail spaces. The growth of the retail sector will likely be driven by smaller cities in the coming years and we at VTEX want to tap these brands and markets in the coming months.

We want our platform and technology to get merchants ahead in their ecommerce goals, making sure that their stores are the fastest and highest converting, and that their experience as administrators of those stores is pleasant, powerful, and differentiated. We’re looking forward to delivering on our visionary roadmap and keeping the conversation going with our customers, assuring that we are focusing on what is essential and making a positive impact on each business that relies on us.