Day 2

The second day of Colloquim’2015 organized at IIM Indore, as a three day mega event on the theme of E-Commerce, kicked off in a spectacular way. The IIM Indore community got the opportunity to listen to five experts deliver guest lectures.   Mr. Alphonso Reddy, Founder and CEO of Fabmart.com, talked about “Gaining customer trust online”, by bringing out differentiated products in the highly commoditized and competitive e-commerce space, to gain profits.   Mr. Mukesh Jain, VP and Head, Big Data Analytics, Reliance Jio, delivered a lecture on “Trapping the customer with data”, and enlightened the listeners on the importance of big data analytics to derive value out of huge customer data collected every second. He talked about SoLoMo,.i.e Social, Local and Mobile, which according to him, is the future. “Do what you enjoy the most”, is what he began his address with.   Mr. Madhur Arora, Head of e-Commerce business, India and Thailand, Expedia Inc., gave a talk on “Travel and hospitality : power houses of e-Commerce”. He talked about some very innovative business models like TravelTriangle, Stayzilla, Zostel, Tripoto, that are addressing every single need of the customer, when it comes to travel and hospitality.   Mr. Rajesh Bysani, AVP-Business Unit Head at Freecharge.in, talked about “Affiliate Marketing”, and its challenges, like poor customer retention, price sensitivity, lack of brand loyalty. His mantra was to “make the customer invest in your product every time”   Mr. Mohit Gupta, VP, Healthkart.com, talked about “E-Commerce 2.0”, and its relevance in the health and fitness category, that is witnessing tremendous growth. He said, “It’s possible to build world class brands through e commerce”, and that is what, he and his colleagues at Healthkart are trying to do.   Following that, there was a panel discussion, with Mr. Alphonse Reddy, Mr. Madhur Arora, Mr. Rajesh Bysani, Mr. Mohit Gupta, Mr. ShyamKaturi, on “Price wars and discounts: race to the bottom or the ultimate winning strategy.” The discussion was an enriching one, with a lot of participation from all the attendees. Post this discussion, a quiz was organized by the Quiz Club, IIM Indore.