Startup Shipway aims to help e-commerce companies improve customer experience

There is no doubt that the Indian market is a hotbed for e-commerce companies. While they compete among themselves for the best range and variety of products at the right cost, they face many operational challenges. The ability to provide the right answer to customer queries and handling shipping of orders and returns with a high degree of efficiency can surely give e-commerce companies a customer for life. Shipway, with its multi-courier tracking platform, aims to empower e-commerce companies by providing a large range of courier tracking integrations. Tech2 speaks to founders Gaurav Gupta and Vikas Garg who share details about the platform and plans to scale it further. Garg shares that the major customer queries are “Where is my order?”, “What is the status of my order?”, “When my order is delivered?”. And the reason behind these queries is that there are no timely customer notifications. “Most of the e-commerce companies are unable to automate these, because, most courier companies in India don’t provide tracking APIs and if they do provide, there is a lot of effort involved to integrate with the system. To add to that, every time they tie-up with new courier partner, they have to go through the whole process,” says Garg. He adds that most e-commerce returns are also due to courier delays. Shipway provides a multi-courier tracking platform. “We empower e-commerce companies by providing 100+ courier tracking integrations in one go. We will notify their customers by SMS/Emails about their order status, that will reduce customer queries. We ask their customer for Order Reviews which helps e-commerce players to improve the bad stock,” says Garg speaking about how their solution works. “We are helping out merchants to serve their customers better and to run their online stores efficiently. Our core principle is to reduce customer support cost and increase customer satisfaction,” adds Garg. Currently the Shipway team stands at 15 members. It works on a subscription based model. The company plans in invest on new technologies to make their product more scalable. Shipway has ready to use plugins for various shopping carts such as Magento, Opencart, Woocommerce, Shopify, ebay which the founders claim makes it easier for their customers to use their services. The company is completely bootstrapped and Garg reveals they are planning to raise $500,000. The founders are continuously building on new capabilities on the platform and has recently adder Order Reviews as a premium service. “We collect and group the Order Reviews post shipment delivery from the customers. We are planning to add that (Reviews as a service) as a standalone service,” says Garg talking about growth plans. They are also working on an Automated Fulfilment System where they have integrated the shipping APIs for various courier companies such as Bludart, Fedex, Aramex, Delhivery, etc. It has features such as assign AWB, serviceability check, print shipping labels, create manifests and request for pickups. It is currently released in beta at www.ezyslips.com Explaining what differentiates them from other players in the market, Garg says, “We are more focused on local market and our products is designed as per Indian customers. Our focus on reducing customer support cost and improving the customer experience sets us apart.” Garg envisions that the number of store owners that use the Shipway platform will grow to 10,000 from the current figure of 3000.