2: Ambareesh Murty on critical business decisions: Moving from online to omni-channel

According to Harvard Business Review, only 7% of customers are online-only shoppers and 73% are omni-channel customers. Clearly, a good looking e-commerce site is not enough anymore.   Ambareesh Murty, Founder and CEO of Pepperfry, shares how he navigated through some of the most critical business decisions on omni-channel strategy, franchise model and advertising on television, etc. Why consumer categories like furniture, require a physical presence, not as a distribution channel but a way to build trust with customers.   Establishing India’s largest business-to-customer supply chain wasn't really easy for Ambareesh. It was the first furniture marketplace to build its own logistics network and managed to establish a niche category for itself in a very crowded unorganized market. In today's world where differentiation is key to success and multiple factors have to be considered to achieve any foothold in competitive markets, Pepperfry continued to build for scale while keeping its inventory light.   On this episode, listen to Ambareesh's definitive guide on what it takes to put-together a winning omnichannel retail strategy and how customers look at the other established horizontal players such as Amazon or Flipkart when it comes to vertical e-commerce.Time range    Topic of discussion 1:05               What got you into the furniture category? 2:12               What made you realize that online was not the only thing that the                        customer needed? 4:29               How did you figure out that opening a physical store was the right thing              for your business? 6:40               The pure reason to have physical stores was to build trust 8:06               What got you to consider a marketplace model? 10:34             Why did you decide not to go custom? 12:08             How do you look at established horizontal players like Amazon                       having a furniture category as well? 15:23             Any advice to entrepreneurs who are thinking about taking their                       vertical business to the next level? 16:59             Your view on profitability versus growth? 18:29             How did you adopt to the franchise model so well?

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