With the global e-commerce market projected to reach $6.3 trillion by the end of 2023, it’s highly likely that your most recent purchase was made through an e-commerce platform. Brands need outstanding shopping experiences to boost conversions and drive growth to seize this revenue opportunity. Helping brands achieve this, the retail tech platform aasaan offers a headless storefront builder and API-first commerce platform to visually create next-generation shopping experiences without coding.
“We are helping build exceptional shopping experiences,” explains aasaan founder Raju Sivaram. “Firstly, we assist SMEs in building online shopping experiences that are faster, easier, and cost-effective using best-in-class technology. This reduces the reliance of online brands on marketplaces and relieves them of the burden of marketplace taxes. Secondly, in the post-cookie era, SMEs need a direct-to-consumer (D2C) channel to collect valuable first-party data, which is crucial for establishing a strong and personalized connection with customers.”
The COVID-19 Pandemic and E-Commerce
The global health crisis drove consumers to online shopping while many brick-and-mortar stores shuttered. The International Trade Administration estimates e-commerce brands saw a 19 percent spike in sales growth in 2020 alone.
With decades of experience building solutions for Fortune 500 companies during their consulting experience, the founders of aasaan—Sivaram Raju, Murali Gottumukkala, and Pramod Kalidindi—now leverage their extensive expertise to empower SMEs and startups.
“We spent over 12 months on R & D before launching our product MVP in June 2022, and within a year, our team has grown to over 24 employees,” explains Sivaram.
The aasaan storefront builder enables you to build headless storefronts in days instead of months and reduces costs significantly. “If SMEs choose to build from scratch, they will require in-house developers or hiring an agency, as it necessitates a team with high-level development skills,” explains Sivaram. “This process is often complex and can cost anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000.”
The Go-To Solution for SMEs
Aasaan, a no-code platform, empowers SMEs to visually create cutting-edge shopping experiences using its headless storefront builder and API-first commerce platform. The service offers over 80 out-of-the-box integrations, including connections with popular platforms like Shopify and Woocommerce, Google Analytics, MailChimp, Zendesk, Hotjar, hosting services, server-side rendering, and more.
Aasaan streamlines business processes and eliminates the hassle of relying on multiple providers. The platform caters to non-technical users. It enables SMEs to build and launch storefronts up to 10 times faster and at a significantly lower cost than traditional solutions. SMEs can add new features, launch new pages, and open storefronts without touching a single line of code.
Since its founding in September 2021, aasaan has successfully onboarded over 10,000 stores in India as part of its beta launch. These stores span a wide range of categories, including clothing, accessories, plants, and home decor. A majority of these brands were able to build their storefronts using just a mobile device. aasaan has surpassed 100,000 app downloads from the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Closing the E-Commerce Marketplace Gap
According to Sivaram, aasaan aims to address the challenges that threaten the longevity of small and mid-size marketplace sellers. Most marketplace sellers realize owning first-party customer data is essential for long-term success, as relying solely on marketplace data becomes increasingly complex, with discoverability and commission fatigue in the long run.
With a subscription model and reduced time-to-market, brands can focus on connecting with customers and driving profits. And as their businesses grow, aassan’s scalable technology grows with users—ensuring business success doesn’t mean a stressful migration to a different platform.
The company is making progress and growing organically. Recently, aasaan attained the second position in Product Hunt’s “Product of the Day” rankings during its global launch.
