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MarketOrders News

Why the future of retail sits at the intersection of e-commerce and the physical retail shop?

 

The digitisation of Gold Jewellery Industry on MarketOrders platform becomes location agnostic and open to global gold jewellery industry which can constantly evolve by investing in and building Unique IP that will add value for every participant on the platform.

 

In order to make MarketOrders a strong marketplace for the gold jewellery industry, MarketOrders must continue to invest heavily in machine learning, blockchain technology and data – analytics capabilities to gain and gather intelligence from trade data flow.

 

 

MarketOrders enhances the intersection of e-commerce and physical retail stores. Retailers understand that strong customer engagement can only be achieved by implementing new innovation and new technology. This realization causes retailers to think about the need to innovate. They are constantly seeking to evolve and innovate. To execute this vision of an in-store experience powered by technology, retailers need to leverage the capital-skill set of both infrastructure and operations which can cost them a fortune.

 

Keeping in mind that retailers are prime for fresh ideas and new approaches, MarketOrders platform introduces new technology to retailers to help elevate the customer experience and create an incentive for shopping offline and driving purchase intent by increasing the visibility of demand  by allowing retailers to discover product of relevance, reduce shoppers frustration and help create pleasing experience and increasing chance of customer delight.

 

We believe that the future of retail sits at the intersection of e-commerce and the physical retail shop. MarketOrders will bring and enhance these two experiences into a seamless integrated and complementary approach.

 

 

The ultimate goal of MarketOrders is to help retailers to leverage real-time placement for retail stores which will create a concentrated and consolidated Marketplace with retail-user interface integration with a unique point of buying. This will enable and optimize retail buying to be unique, personalized and enable customisable experiences and pushes retailers to know who is their customer in the rise of the experience economy.

 

Today, the world is entering a new phase of globalization where digital technology is rapidly changing the nature of doing business. MarketOrders platform is adopting the technology to digitize the entire end to end supply chain of the gold jewellery industry in this new world across physical and digital commerce by bringing a centralized hub and digitising it.

 

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

 

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MarketOrders News

Proud to announce MarketOrders co-founder, Sukhi Jutla, wins the Top 100 Rising Star awards!

 

We at MarketOrders are over the moon to announce that our co-founder and COO, Sukhi Jutla, won the We Are The City’s Rising Star Awards (Entrepreneur) beating over 1,250 candidates- well done Sukhi!
 

The Awards are powered by The Sunday Times and Sukhi will attend a glittering awards ceremony to pick up her award in July!

 

 

 

 

About WATC Rising Stars Awards

The Rising Star awards were introduced to showcase the UK pipeline of female talent below management and to create female 100 role models across different industries and professions.

The awards were entered by 1,250 individuals were judged by a panel of 54 independent judges. Over 35,000 public votes were received for the 200 shortlisted nominees. The awards were kindly sponsored by The Times & The Sunday Times and supported by 3M, Accenture, Aon, Barclays, Bloomberg, Cancer Research UK, CMI Women, Edit Development, EPAA, Jessica Huie Public Relations (JHPR), Jobbio, Kier, Lloyds Banking Group, Lloyd’s, Northern Trust, PedalSure, Reed Smith, Royal Navy, SAGE and Sodexo.

 

 

We at MarketOrders would like to congratulate all the winners and extend a sincere thanks to everyone who supported Sukhi’s nomination for the Rising Stars during 2018 – thank you for your support!

 

Check out the full list of winners here: https://bit.ly/2tbxYqW

 

https://risingstars.wearethecity.com/rising-stars-winners-2018/rising-stars-entrepreneurs-startups-2018/

 

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

 

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MarketOrders News

How the gold jewellery industry can adopt a centralised platform strategy

 
The gold jewellery industry is a very ancient industry. It is as old as civilisation itself and its one of the few industries which haven’t been revolutionised by the use of technology…until now that is!

 
MarketOrders is on a mission to bring unity and centralisation to this fragmented industry.  And for the gold industry to become digital, they must first be bought into centralisation.

 
To understand this better, let us consider planes and passengers. For example, when there is no airport, just imagine the scenario. Planes land in any available space to land the aircraft and board the passenger and head back to the destination.

 
Now, this situation would cause havoc in the aviation industry. The passenger has to go to any landing space of aircraft NOT knowing which destination the plane will head back to. And this happens because there is no visibility of demand and supply.

 

photo credit:  https://pixabay.com/en/aircraft-landing-reach-injection-513641/

 

Now, apply this scenario of an airport or hub to that of a centralised platform. You now have total visibility of what planes are available and how many passengers want to take a flight. The passengers will have visibility of which aircraft are at which terminals. They will know what time the planes will leave and which destinations they are heading in.

 
The airport concept serves as a centralised mechanism, not just as a centralised infrastructure connecting passengers, planes and destinations but also providing retail offerings such as shops, restaurants and shopping mall experiences.

 
MarketOrders can leverage a similar system by providing a centralised hub for the gold jewellery industry. This would enable multiple participants such as manufacturers and retailers to collaborate in many ways.

 
As an initial adoption of strategy in building the first ever concentrated market via centralization, MarketOrders is using a three-pronged strategy approach. These are centralisation, creating unique IP and e-commerce. In the next blog post, we take a deep dive into this unique approach.

 

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

 

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MarketOrders News

Why the gold jewellery industry must adopt a platform strategy

 

The gold jewellery industry is a very ancient industry. It is as old as civilisation itself when early humans would gift gold and adorn it on their bodies. From day one it has had a cultural and personal significance. And thousands of years later, it still remains an untapped and fragmented market where technology has yet to make it smark on this industry worth $175 billion dollar industry.

 

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/sculpture-museum-perth-gold-digger-1104196/

 
Today, this industry still operates in a highly fragmented and scattered manner. As a result, the industry must re-invent itself as a hub suited for the digital world.

 

Today in digitally dominated economies, marketplaces offer customers the opportunity to connect with one another. The Gold Jewelry industry must adopt this approach of a centralized marketplace. In a way, the marketplace is the most ancient way of trading goods. And this is also where the digital age has gravitated towards – a marketplace that is truly global in scale with thanks to technology.

 

A digitised centralised platform will act as a key advantage for sellers and buyers by allowing them to connect through a digitally initiated platform.

 

Today, digital technologies are changing the nature of globalization. The digital economy is driven by the rapid growth of a digital transformation and it’s happening at a breakneck speed.

 

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/bitcoin-money-virtual-market-3137984/

 

The MarketOrders platform will be an engine of innovation for gold jewellery retailers specifically and retailers in general SME’s as it will allow them to participate in international trade without the need to invest in their own technology-driven supply chain.

 

In the changing landscape, gold jewellery retailers and the entire industry needs to re-imagine and re-invent its position in centralised platforms and leverage its current strength in physical gold trade retailing to create a new digital trade.

 

 

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

 

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MarketOrders News

Congratulations, Sukhi for being shortlisted for WeAreTheCity’s Rising Star Awards

 

It gives us great pleasure to inform you that our co-founder, Sukhi Jutla, has been shortlisted for WeAreTheCity’s Rising Star Awards.

 

They received a record number of entries this year (over 1,200!), with every single category being oversubscribed with amazing nominations from across the UK and Northern Ireland. 

 

Well done Sukhi on getting through to the shortlist stage and on all your achievements to date, you should be exceptionally proud to make it into the final 10 in your category!

 

Please support Sukhi’s nomination by casting a vote for her which will help to continue to shine the spotlight on #femalefounders from #diverse backgrounds! Just click on the link below:

 

 

 

 
You can read the official PR Release here from WATC:

 

 

PRESS RELEASE 

Embargoed until 8.30AM 14 May 2018

WeAreTheCity Rising Star Awards 2018

WeAreTheCity shines the spotlight on 200 remarkable women as part of their Rising Star Awards shortlist

WeAreTheCity are proud to announce the shortlist for their 2018 Rising Star Awards.

The Rising Star Awards, now in their fourth year, are the first to focus on the UK’s female talent pipeline below management level. Through these awards, we will celebrate 100 individual female contributors that represent the leaders and role models of tomorrow. We hope that by raising the profile of our shortlist and winners, we will also encourage organisations to consider how they strengthen the development of their female pipeline in the future.

The 200-strong shortlist showcases remarkable women within the UK from across 20 categories representing different industries/professions. An example of the amazing women shortlisted this year are; Georgia Shiels, Racing Driver, Georgia Shiels Racing; Madeline Pizzoni, Helicopter Pilot, British Army and Krystal Archer, DJ & Social Entrepreneur, SuperFoxx.

The Rising Star awards also include a Company of the Year award, which recognises the achievements of a company who can demonstrate that they are actively supporting and developing their female talent pipeline through initiatives, training, development programmes and/or internal employee relations groups. Shortlisted companies this year are Barclays, J. P. Morgan and Sky.

The awards will continue to celebrate Rising Star Champions, recognising the efforts of senior leaders who are actively supporting the female pipeline, included in this year’s shortlist are Chris Stylianou, COO, UK & Ireland, Sky and Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, Lawyer and Equality Campaigner.

Recognising that careers for women may follow different timescales, the Rising Star Awards do not have any age restrictions included within the criteria guidelines. WeAreTheCity feels it has a responsibility to ensure that female talent, regardless of age and background, receives the necessary support and skills to transition into key decision-making roles within our organisations.

Chris Duncan, Managing Director, Times Newspaper Ltd, said “It has been a tumultuous year for gender politics across the world, and programs that nurture the next generation of female talent have never been more important. We at The Times and The Sunday Times are delighted to continue to support the Rising Star Awards to recognise the tremendous work being done by the next generation of leaders across British industry. We would like to wish this years shortlisted individuals the very best of luck.”

The 2018 awards are headline sponsored by The Times and The Sunday Times. Category sponsors include an array of leading FTSE 100 companies and industry leaders: 3M, Accenture, Aon, Barclays, Bloomberg, CMI, CR-UK, EDIT Development, EPAA, Jobbio, JHPR, Kier, Lloyd’s, Lloyds Banking Group, Northern Trust, PedalSure, Royal Navy, Reed Smith, SAGE and Sodexo.

Vanessa Vallely, Founder of WeAreTheCity, said, “The calibre of entries this year has been truly exceptional. I am so excited to meet our shortlisted individuals at NewsUK to celebrate their success. Every one of these women should be extremely proud of their achievements. They are key contributors to their industries and outstanding role models. I wish them the very best of luck in the final round of judging.”

All shortlisted individuals will be invited to celebrate their achievements at an event hosted by NewsUK on 6 June. The 200 women will now face the final judging period and the public vote. The overall top 100 winners will be announced on 18 June 2018.

The winners will then be celebrated on 12 July 2018 at a prestigious evening reception and awards ceremony at NewsUK in London alongside our judges and sponsors.

The public are encouraged to cast their votes of support for our shortlisted nominees via risingstars.wearethecity.com

 

 

@WATC_Updates , Rising Star, Vanessa Vallely
WeAreTheCity, https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearethecity/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessavallely/

 

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

 

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MarketOrders News

Featured in Around Ealing, Meeting HRH The Countess of Wessex + The AWA Awards

 
In this weeks blog post we have some great news to share. Our co-founder and COO, Sukhi Jutla, was featured in Around Ealing, where she shares tips on how she left a corporate job, started MarketOrders and wrote several books!
 
You can read the full post here: http://ealingnewsextra.co.uk/jobs-and-skills/win-a-book-and-maybe-start-a-new-career/

 

There is also a competition which you can enter and win a copy of Sukhi’s bestselling book, Escape The Cubicle: Quit The Job Yoo hate, so be sure to enter.

 

 

 

Asian Woman of Achievement Awards

 

Sukhi is also a finalist in the Asian Women of Achievement Awards where the winners will be announced at a special gala dinner on May 9th 2018.  

 

We are thrilled to announce that Her Royal Highness The Countess of Wessex, the Global Ambassador for the Women of the Future Programme, will be joining us at the annual Asian Women of Achievement Awards on May 9th at the London Hilton on Park Lane.

 

 
The Countess has been a long-time supporter of the Women of the Future Programme, having attended the Women of the Future Awards and Summit in previous years.

 

Good luck Sukhi at the AWA Awards!

 

Remeber, don’t forgot to check out Suki’s post here and enter the competition:  http://ealingnewsextra.co.uk/jobs-and-skills/win-a-book-and-maybe-start-a-new-career/

 

 Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

 

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MarketOrders News

Why the Gold industry needs to wake up to the reality of blockchain technology

 
I walked into the newsagent to get some water and nibbles as I was driving a long way to visit one of my customers on the outskirts of London. It should have been an uneventful occurrence to grab a bottle of water when my eyes darted to what I thought was an ATM machine. But this was no ordinary ATM.

 

It said ‘BITCOIN ATM Machine’

 

 

 

I instantly looked at the shop owner and he smiled back and said,’ I know what your thinking’ as if he had read my mind!

 

I am a passionate advocate for blockchain technology and recently qualified as an IBM Foundation Blockchain Developer to quench my growing thirst for how this technology suddenly became more mainstream and the ways in which it is already disrupting traditional industries. (see my last post where my co-founder Sukhi Jutla, became the works, first author, to have a book published on the blockchain.

http://s752989504.websitehome.co.uk/get-women-fintech-interview-marketorders-coo-co-founder-sukhi-jutla/

 

I continued to look at the Bitcoin ATM machine as I had heard about their existence but till now thought it was the myth. I didn’t realize people were using cryptocurrency to pay for their water bottles already!

 

Though blockchain tech is relatively new (it’s under a decade old), I am a newcomer to this industry but it’s changing so fast already. I have recently begun to get really inspired and excited about the way this technology can bring about huge changes especially in making things move more efficiently. In the gold industry, this means more transparency in the supply chain process as well as in confirming the origin of products.

 

So thought I was surprised to see my first Bitcoin vending machine, it certainly won’t be the last time I will see it. Perhaps next time, I may even pay for my bottle of water with a cryptocurrency!
 

 Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao
 

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MarketOrders News

Q& A with the founders of Marketorders

 

Today’s blog is a quick fire Q&A with the Founders, Ram and Sukhi. They talk about what MarketOrders does, how they came up with the idea of digitising the gold trade industry and the defining moment that changed it all.

 

 

Tell us what your business does in fewer than 25 words:

MarketOrders in an online marketplace helping to connect independent jewellery brands directly to manufacturer’s around the world to source the best products at the best price.

 

 

How did you come up with the idea?     

The founders have been in the gold jewellery market for over 15 years and saw how inefficient and archaic the processes and systems are in the gold industry where it is still run in a very traditional manner and only 4% of transactions occur on-line.

 

We found in our previous business that we were still taking orders manually and found there was no online or curated destination for jewellery retailers to be able to source the products they needed. So we decided to help the retailers by accepting multiple small orders from many retailers and aggregating their orders. This aggregated order was then sent to the manufacturer who could accept larger orders and give us bulk discount savings. These savings are then passed back to the jewellery retailers.

 

Without MarketOrders, small retailers cannot access the products and prices the large manufacturer reserves for larger orders and clients. And the manufacturers also benefit by getting more orders from more customers. MarketOrders allows a more efficient way to manage the supply/demand issues that many small retailers and SMEs face.  

 

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/dropshipping-oberlo-shopify-3264486/

 

 

What makes your business different from the competition?    

MarketOrders is the only online curated destination for the gold jewellery industry where every step of the process is online. Our customers, the retailers, can order products online, pay online and the products are delivered to their door.

 

All our competitors are still working in a hybrid version where only some of the processes are on-line and the rest is very manual and hence time-consuming which can lead to a lot of delays.

 

By bringing the entire supply chain online  MarketOrders is able to bring greater visibility to the supply and demand of gold jewellery products. We can also collate data and use those insights to help our customers. For example, retailers can track which products sell the most at certain times throughout the year and we can even use this data to do predictive orders.   

 

                          

Who are your clients/customers? How many do you have?

MarketOrders is a 2-sided marketplace so we work with both the jewellery retailers (SMEs) and the manufacturers.

Currently we serve retailers based in the UK and work with manufacturers abroad (Hong Kong, Singapore & Dubai).

Our focus is on serving the gold, diamond and precious metals jewellers in the B2B space.

 

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/jewelry-necklace-diamond-ring-3213722/

                            

 

Key moments

 

 

What’s been the most challenging thing about starting your business so far? 

The gold industry is extremely traditional and operates largely off-line. The only way to break into this market is by trust. It took us years to build solid relationships with manufactures and retailers. This took a lot of time and effort to develop but was worth it. Because this is the only way to really understand the problems your customers are facing.

 

Gold is an emotional product; people use it to look beautiful or use it as an investment for their security, so there is a huge amount of trust involved in every transaction. You need to prove that you are providing gold of a premium quality, be very clear and open as to where it is sourced from and to be able to deliver the products on time. So building that deep trust with each one of our customers had to be done in person and was challenging as it took many years to do.                

 

What was your breakthrough moment?   

When we realised we could aggregate multiple small orders from multiple retailers and aggregate them to a larger singular order so the manufacturer could accept the orders and give us bulk discount savings.  This solved 2 problems; allowing smaller retailers to access these large manufacturers and get more designs and products at a lower price and also allow manufacturers to increase their capacity utilisation as their machinery was often left idle as they needed minimum orders to produce the products. For the first time, the gold industry was now on-line and had an on-line presence.             

 

 

What is your goal for your business?

To create the largest and most trusted marketplace for the supply and provision of gold and associated products and take it to an IPO.

 

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

 

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MarketOrders News

What is a B4B model and how can it impact the gold jewellery retailers & SMEs?

 

MarketOrders is modelling a B4B concept to enhance consumer centric culture among independent gold jewellery retailers.

 

jewelry-store-1803808_640

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/jewelry-store-wedding-rings-wedding-1803808/

 

B4B is ‘Business-For-Business’ and it differs from the traditional B2B model (Business-To-Business) by putting the SMEs at the heart of every transaction.

SMEs are empowered to source and order the products they want as opposed to the B2B model whereby manufacturers produce what they want and then push the products down the distribution channel with no regards as to what the SMEs need and want.

And the SME is the one who knows what they need as they face off to the end consumer on a daily basis.

By using MarketOrders, SMEs can tailor their orders to what they need and the data we collect helps them to analyse what products are selling the best. They can use this data to make better and informed decisions.

 

man-3230661_640

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/man-people-achievement-african-3230661/

 

There is a severe lack of such data in the jewellery trade industry but these insights are imperative and needed.

MarketOrders will be building out a detailed Data Dashboard for our SMEs so they can track and view what items sell the best.

They can use insights form this data to make better decisions and choices and ultimately be better placed to serve their end consumers. Such data can give them a competitive edge from all the other retailers, especially online, that they are now facing.

Are you a SME operating in the jewellery business? Please share your thoughts and tell us how MarketOrders can serve you better by leaving a comment below this post.

 

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao