Snapdeal, one of India’s biggest online marketplaces, is setting up an office in the United States in a bid to fight off its rivals in an evermore competitive domestic landscape for the e-commerce sector.
The company, which is backed by investors including Softbank, Alibaba, and Foxconn, on Tuesday announced its plans to set up a data services centre in San Carlos, California to drive its growth.
It will use data and analytics, including data-driven algorithms and predictive modelling, to understand the trends and preferences of its customers and ultimately increase the website’s consumer base.
The centre has brought on board “veteran data scientists” from top global brands, including Groupon, Google, Yahoo and Amazon, Snapdeal said.
Rohit Bansal, the co-founder of Snapdeal, said that the move was intended “to further augment our efforts in creating a superior customer experience and strengthen our supply chain”.
“Snapdeal is extensively working on data mining through an existing analytics team,” he added. “The data science team will focus on elevating Snapdeal’s growth-focused strategy and providing insightful guidance. The richer understanding of the customers from capturing and integrating the information on their buying behaviour will drive habit commerce.”
The company is aiming to have 20 million daily transacting users by 2020, he said.
Snapdeal, based in New Delhi, was founded in 2010 by Mr Bansal and Kunal Bahl. Its figures show that it has 300,000 sellers and millions of users, and it delivers to more than 6,000 cities and towns across India.
“We have a highly accomplished team that can distil key patterns, consumer preferences and hidden correlations by quickly analysing huge quantities of data,” said Nitin Sharma, the senior vice president of data sciences at Snapdeal.
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