Bulbul TV Makes E-Commerce Mobile and Social with a Unique Customer Experience

Live streaming-led commerce is driving conversion rates into the stratosphere. It’s a huge market, a huge opportunity, and my latest guest for the #ReimagineGrowth Series sponsored by CleverTap, is a huge success because of it: Sachin Bhatia, co-founder and CEO of Bulbul TV. It’s a platform that makes online shopping not only engaging but social.  

Sachin did what so many marketers forget — he put his customers at the center of the strategy and provided them with an experience that addresses not only their needs, but their unique cultural expectations.  

Catering to the needs of Indian shoppers 

Put simply, Bulbul TV is like QVC on steroids for a very young audience. Based in Dehli, the platform caters to a specific set of consumers. “India has 40 million new internet users every year, right, and this audience will grow up, get exposed first to video. This is an audience which is not comfortable with product descriptions and reading product descriptions and product reviews so they, in a way, want to be spoon fed that information.” 

The Bulbul experience mirrors the real-life shopping experience. Sachin says, “India still loves to go out and shop.” 

Amazon is a very intent driven solitary experience, where customers know exactly what they want and search for it. “But I think ours is more a discovery platform and that’s how Indians shop,” says Sachin. “Indians, one, love to go out and shop and browse, secondly. I’m not generalizing, this is really what happens on the ground – it’s a very social experience. Friends go with friends, families go with families, even during the weekday, we will take somebody with us to the bazaars or the markets in India.” 

But it’s not just about having company on your shopping experience — it’s about having a second (or even third) opinion. Your friends and family can often say, “That lipstick looks good on you,” or “Hey, this cushion will look nice in your living room.” Much of that interaction is lost in traditional online shopping experience.  

“We are bringing that offline behavior online by showcasing everything on video,” says Sachin. “I can’t solve for touch and feel of the product but I can solve everything else by having very, very relatable hosts who present products, who showcase them, answer all your questions. They are mildly aspirational so that kind of works and that is what helps build trust. And I think those are some of the things that a catalog, which is what Amazon really is, can’t really do, right? It’s a very one-way kind of interaction – ours is very, very interactive.” 

Crafting the Bulbul TV experience with its customers’ peculiar wants and needs in mind, has led to a loyal user base that is happy to help spread the word.  

Even now, Bulbul TV doesn’t lean too heavily on the big ad platforms. “If you are to build a sustainable e-commerce business, especially in India, you have to have a view that you will wean yourself off Google and Facebook because performance marketing can only get you so far,” says Sachin. “Eventually it depends on live organic traffic so you do a lot of brand building. Brand building comes from communication, one, obviously of a brand, brand ads etc, but it also comes from just having, being very customer-focused.” 

To learn more about how Bulbul TV is growing its business through great customer experiences, check out the entire interview.