Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Uppler CEO Grégoire Chauvin (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In a way, you’re doing PaaS, but I’m talking about something that’s slightly different. For example, Shopify is doing a very good job of this. They have a core e-commerce platform. They’ve opened that up for developers to add to additional apps.

They have an app marketplace built on their platform. That is doing very well. They’ve got a tremendous number of apps that have come together.

Their claim is that their customers use five or more apps from the marketplace which has created a lot of stickiness and a lot of broadening of the capabilities of their platforms. You’re talking about this full-function platform. They can compete with IBM at a fraction of the cost. 

Grégoire Chauvin: There is a rivalry on the technology side between SaaS and the open-source model. With the open-source model, you are able to develop whatever you want. The weapon against that from SaaS is to open your own app store or your own marketplace of apps where anyone is able to create their own service, connect it to the website, and making it available to anyone, even resell.

This app store is critical for Shopify as it has been critical for Salesforce. This is what makes them a leader in that market. I’m not sure if they’re a leader, but on the SMB side, they are leaders. Today, if you want to compete with Shopify, you do not just need to create a nice solution; you need to have thousands of apps developed by third-party players. 

Sramana Mitra: Which is extremely difficult to do. 

Grégoire Chauvin: Yes. 

Sramana Mitra: How does that trend apply to you in what you’re doing? Are you going to do that kind of a marketplace?

Grégoire Chauvin: We are in a niche sector. For instance, just having the features to create a B2B marketplace, there are around two or three companies in the world that are able to do it. You cannot do it with Shopify the way we do it.

For the moment, this is not the top priority. We still have a technological edge on the market but of course, this is the next step. Each time we develop an integration with Salesforce, Oracle, or any ERP, we make it available to the rest of the clients in order for them to have access to this app store.

The next step then is to make it more open to third-party developers so they can create their own apps. I would say that with our solution, people can do it all on our platform.

Sramana Mitra: It’s very interesting what you’re doing. It’s very much on our radar. Marketplaces is also a big trend. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Uppler CEO Grégoire Chauvin
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