O2O Marketplace OhLocal Aims Exponential Growth in 2023, Looking to Generate Business Opportunity of Over INR 90 Cr for its Partnered Retailers and Local Sellers Across India

OhLocal – India’s first-of-its-kind O2O (online-to-offline) local commerce marketplace platform that is connecting local merchants with consumers in their respective locations cities via its flagship Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled platform – has announced they are currently looking to scale-up operations exponentially and in parallel increase the Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) on their platform in the upcoming year, i.e. 2023. Additionally, by 2023-end, OhLocal will be targeting to partner with 10,000+ sellers/merchants across India and thereby creating an over INR 90 Cr business opportunity for them. Also, by the same time, OhLocal aims to expand its tested and proven hyperlocal hybrid-commerce platform to at least 20 cities in India, while adding roughly 300-500 local merchants in each of these cities.

OhLocal is a next-gen hybrid-commerce marketplace committed to bridging these gaps between online and offline commerce in India, and providing the best of both worlds – the convenience of online shopping and the trust and feel of offline shopping. OhLocal works towards bridging the gaps between local sellers and buyers in a specific city/location by ensuring that a consumer can get prices from multiple local sellers before buying any product and can choose the best deal in terms of pricing. In fact, OhLocal, through its cutting-edge tech, is able to reverse the entire process of e-commerce which leads to better prices and more effective product discovery and availability in the local market, wherein a product is requested by a buyer. OhLocal’s unique business model and platform has created a win-win-win opportunity and optimal value creation for all stakeholders in the new-age commerce ecosystem i.e. End-Users (Customers), Brands, and Sellers.

Speaking about the platform’s growth plans, Devashish Goyal, Founder & CEO, OhLocal says, “Come 2023, and we at OhLocal are aiming to achieve aggressive growth at multiple levels – starting from growing our user base to partnered seller base and much more. Off late, a dire need has been felt to digitize local sellers and retailers in India and enable them to embrace emerging technologies in such a way that they are able to play on their strengths. And we at OhLocal are committed to doing just that. In the coming year, while aiming a 10x growth in our partnered merchant volume, we at OhLocal shall simultaneously strive to achieve at least 17X spike in terms of business generation for them. Besides growing significantly on the consumer and partnered seller side, we will also look to expand to new geographies soon and would be introducing new product categories such as furniture, fashion, mattresses, among others, with our flagship hybrid-commerce platform.

As of date, the OhLocal platform has onboarded around 800+ local sellers across 5 cities in India – including various types of sellers – from small retailers and shop owners to medium and large sellers and so on, who have already received an overall business opportunity of INR 5.4 Cr from OhLocal. And in the process, OhLocal has also helped these sellers on to save significant amounts in commissions, which they would otherwise need to pay to large e-commerce giants in order to enlist and sell their products online. Notably, the average commission fees charged by most big ecommerce websites or platforms tend to be 8-10%, whereas on OhLocal, getting on boarded onto their platform is a simple and free-of-cost procedure for all types of local sellers/merchants.

Notably, till date, OhLocal has acquired around 10k users; and going forward, they are looking to strategically grow the platform’s user base to at least 5 lakhs by end of 2023. Whereas from a geographical expansion standpoint, by 2023-end, OhLocal --- which is currently present in Meerut, Noida, Gurugram, and Ghaziabad – plans to be soon venturing into Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Gwalior, Jaipur, Udaipur, among other cities.

About OhLocal

Founded in October 2020, OhLocal is India’s first-if-its-kind ‘online-to-offline’ (O2O) commerce marketplace connecting local merchants with consumers in their respective cities via an Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled smart, real-time bidding platform while offering prices competitive against the biggest online retailers or e-commerce players. OhLocal is driving and leading the #Vocal4Local initiative of the Government of India from the front, and in its truest sense. And hence the company’s tagline aptly says – “Naye Bharat ki Nayi Dukaan”.

OhLocal is a next-gen hybrid shopping platform that creates a win-win-win opportunity and optimal value creation for all stakeholders in the new-age commerce ecosystem. Through its unique business model, OhLocal is improving the consumer experience drastically and eliminating the tedious process of hopping multiple websites or stores for today’s consumers, while allowing them to have better product discovery, availability and the best prices, thereby making OhLocal India’s very first platform that is bridging the gap between online and offline commerce. The startup has recently raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding from clutch of investors like Sunil Kumar Singhvi (JITO Angel Network), Harish Menon (House of Alpha Wealth Management), Sahil Goel (MiH ventures) and Puneet Verma (Aquilo).

AI-enabled O2O Marketplace OhLocal Raises Pre-Seed Funding Led By India Accelerator

The Company plans to utilize the funds to strengthen product development, grow the merchant base, expand rapidly in metros and non-metros.

OhLocal is AI enabled smart bidding platform connecting local buyers and sellers in real time.

Gurugram based OhLocal, an O2O marketplace startup, on Wednesday, announced to have raised an undisclosed Pre-Seed round led by India Accelerator, with participation from HNIs and marquee angels.

OhLocal is an AI-enabled smart bidding platform that offers local buyers and local sellers an online marketplace platform to buy and sell products locally. Currently, OhLocal is in four cities namely Meerut, Ghaziabad Noida and Gurugram working with 100+ local sellers and has generated a business worth of 2+ cr in 4 months of operation where buyers are getting up to 20% less prices than e-commerce.

“We strongly believe that the founding team at OhLocal has created a revolutionary platform as today, enthused by ‘online’ success in new-age customer segments, many players have tried to adapt their value proposition by picking up the best elements of offline experience.The thinking right now is that the new normal is going to be different irrespective of how things pan out. While local businesses in big cities work with larger cash flows, the same isn’t true for their counterparts in smaller towns,with an increased number of brands moving to online delivery models, OhLocal,India’s first platform that provides the best of both worlds, the convenience of online shopping and the experience of offline shopping. We look forward to witnessing OhLocal emerge as O2O Marketplace Mona Singh, Co-Founder of India Accelerator.

“With the rapid digitisation of the economy it is imperative that hyper local businesses integrate themselves to the digital economy. OhLocal is perhaps the best placed to address this problem by Mimicking the offline experience of a shopper on a digital platform keeping both, the merchant, as well as customer satisfied, has been key to OhLocal's Product Strategy. The bidding engine, alternate product suggestion by vendor and no margin business model makes it an ideal place for shoppers and merchants to meet" Founder Devashish Goyal

“OhLocal is aiming to capture the shift in post pandemic market in terms of how traditionally offline consumers want to shop online in future. As an investor I am fully convinced of their business model and particularly impressed by Devashish’s deep understanding of target consumers and solving their issues in a uniquely innovative way. I see tremendous potential for it to grow and scale up across the country in next couple of years”, said, Arindam Mukhopadhyay, Vice President & Global Head of Consulting CoE at Gartner.

The Company plans to utilize the funds to strengthen product development, grow the merchant base, expand rapidly in metros and non-metros.