BENGALURU: Selling a product online allows businesses to reach a wider audience and new customers. Companies have started leveraging technology to reduce the rate of return of products faced by online marketplaces, reports Payal Ganguly for ET Bureau.

Online marketplace Luxepolis is venturing into the trend by utilizing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to tackle the problem of returns. Luxepolis sells products ranging from designer apparel to high-end automobiles. The company uses near-field communication (NFC) enabled tag and reader to decipher codes that are unique to every product in order to validate the returned item. "We have developed a solution for solving the problem of customers playing with our system. What happens when a customer claims he or she received a fake bag when we actually shipped a genuine authentic bag? Some companies have also found customers returning products after using them,” says Vijay KG, Co-founder, Luxepolis.

Anvita Mehra, Co-founder of Confidential Couture, which brings sellers and buyers of pre-owned luxury products on a common platform and currently sells 70 products on average every month says that the they do not offer refunds currently and offer only exchange of products. The organization places a prominent seal on the product to ensure that the product can be used only after the seal is broken.

According to Sujoy Guha, CEO of CriticaLog, solutions for business-to-business returns follow a different model and are easier to carry out than consumer-to-business. "For business-to-business returns, as in the case of Fossil watches, for which we carry out returns from multi-brand-outlets, we sort the products based on model number and also take down the details of damages, if any. However, C2B is tricky as what is inside the product is difficult to ascertain by the logistics partner," says Guha. CriticaLog carries out transport of critical logistics solutions for high-value goods and critical spares.

Management of returns can be a major factor in scaling up the online luxury business."There are pincodes, localities and customers who are blacklisted by companies based on their returns history. Most of the online businesses factor in the cost of returns in their business model, and in case of high-value items it can cost the company more," says Harish HV, Partner-India Leadership Team, Grant Thornton.

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