Case Study on FirstCry - How it Identified an Untapped Opportunity

While shopping for a child, one needs to be much more careful than shopping for an adult. The products have to be good and hygienic enough to be used by a kid after all every parent desires to provide their kids with the best things in the world. Extra precautions are taken whenever there is a child involved, the same goes with shopping, doesn’t matter, if you are doing it offline or online.

The E-commerce business in India has been thriving for over a decade. Now a day’s most of the shopping is done online, especially after the pandemic, people started indulging themselves in doing most of their business online.

Amongst hundreds of online shopping sites, Flipkart, Amazon, Myntra are some that are well known in this industry. Apart from all these, we also have different E-commerce sites that specially deal with the products of babies, kids, and mothers. One will find anything that a child and their parents can need in for them in here.

One of them is FirstCry, this offline and online store is said to be the largest store in Asia containing newborn babies and kids products. In this article, we will talk about the brand FirstCry and everything about it. So, let’s dive in.

“Ecommerce isn’t the cherry on the cake, it’s the new cake” - Jean Paul Ago

History and Journey of FirstCry
Brands and Products of FirstCry
Business Model and Revenue Model of FirstCry
Goals, Challenges, Solution, and Competitors of Firstcry
FAQ

History and Journey of FirstCry

FirstCry was founded in the year 2010, on the month of September by Amitava Saha, Sanket Hattimattur, Prashant Jadav, and Supam Maheshwari. The main goal of the startup was to provide the best brands of baby care products to babies and their parents.

Any and every type of kids' products can be found here, diapering, nursery products, apparel, toys, skincare, healthcare, and so many other things. Over 200k products can be found in FirstCry both from Indian and International brands.

FirstCry started its journey at a time when baby care products were not available to buy online. At that time, there was a big need for an online platform that will provide products for kids, so the founders sees an opportunity in this and launched FirstCry, the first online platform that is solely dedicated to kids.

Two subsidiaries Babyhug and Cutewalk are under FirstCry as well, a clothing label and a footwear label respectively. The headquarters of FirstCry is located in Pune, Maharashtra, India, and the company has more than 380 stores all over India. In 2019, FirstCry launched its first official outlet in Srinagar. It has more than 150 franchises in over 100 cities in India now.

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Brands and Products of FirstCry

As mentioned before any and every kind of babies and kids products are available in FirstCry. Some of them are:

Food Products by Firstcry

• Chocolates
• Candies
• Sweets
• Breakfast and Cereals
• Snacks
• Jams, Spreads, and Ketchup
• Milk powder containers

Diapering and Baby Care Products by Firstcry

• Diapers
• Baby Wipes
• Diaper Bags
• Diaper Changing Maps
• Bed Protectors
• Potty Chairs and Seats
• Baby lotion
• Baby Shampoo

Apart from all these clothes, fashion accessories, footwear and toys are also available here.

Business Model and Revenue Model of FirstCry

FirstCry followed the Online-to-offline (O2O) business strategy which means it opened physical stores to attract its online customers to shop from their offline outlet as well.

FirstCry took an initiative and tied up with different hospitals all across the country; where whenever a baby gets delivered the parents receive ‘FirstCry Box’ as a way of saying Congratulations. Through this initiative, FirstCry was able to promote the brand in front of millions of new parents. The conversion rate was extremely high through this.

After adopting the hybrid business model, it is focusing on expanding the offline stores. They are also making money through products from BabyHug and Cutewalk.

Currently, the revenue of FirstCry is INR 897 Crores, and with its value of $1.9 Billion, it has added its name to the list of Unicorns in India. As of 2021 FirstCry has over 2000 employees working for it.

Goals, Challenges, Solution, and Competitors of Firstcry

The growth of a company is necessary and it can only be done when they fulfil all their goals and overcome all the challenges.

Goals of FirstCry

There are some aims that are the prime focus of FirstCry and they are:

• The first goal is to increase the number of orders placed for the products.
• Pursue the customers so that they can repeat their purchases.
• To increase the average order value.
• To increase customer engagement.

Challenges of FirstCry

• The unorganized market is quite a problem.
• Understanding the wants and behaviour of the parents is a hurdle here.

Solutions

To solve the challenges they have taken some steps and they are:

• To understand the behaviours of the parents, a feature called Funnel analysis is being used.
• Based on the purchase history and the behaviour of the users, products are recommended to them.

Competitors of Firstcry

• Pampers
• Johnsons
• Huggies
• Himalaya Baby Products
• Chicco Baby Products
• MamaEarth Baby Products
• Mamy Poko
• Libero

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Conclusion

FirstCry learned the necessary techniques including user engagement pretty well, which lead to fulfilling their goals of repeated purchase and the increase in average order value. FirstCry now has experienced 10 million downloads on the Google Play store.

Being an E-commerce site specializing in baby products is actually a huge responsibility, especially when you are the first one to do that in the country. FirstCry does whatever they can to keep up with the name of being Asia’s biggest store that provides every kind of baby care product.

FAQ

Who is the owner of FirstCry?

FirstCry was founded by Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha.

Is FirstCry an Indian company?

FirstCry is an Indian online store for baby products. It was launched in the year 2010.

Is Babyhug owned by FirstCry?

Babyhug is an in-house brand of FirstCry.