Wednesday 23 December 2015

FlipKart Li`I Star

When I received an invite for the launch of `Flipkart Li`I Star – India’s Biggest Online Kids Store’, I was little skeptical about attending it. But when IB announced that one need not be parent to attend this meet, I was all set to go….The whole idea was to gain knowledge/awareness about the kid’s products available online. Moreover, I didn’t want to miss it as it was the last event of the year 2015.


E-commerce is one of the biggest trading platform in India and the trend is catching up very rapidly because of its convenience as well as security. Back in 2007, when Flipkart was launched, e-commerce concept was just in its nascent stages. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal took a bold step to start an e-commerce company in India. It was a risk but they were determined to take it further and now it’s booming in leaps n bounds with an expected worth of $100 bn by 2020.

Flipkart initially began by selling books online and then soon expanded to offer various other products. Infact, they were first to start the ‘Cash on Delivery’ service. And now they have stepped in the Kids & Toys section, which are categoried into “Toys for Girls and Boys” & “Toys by Age”. In this fast paced life where parents hardly get time for outdoor shopping /shop hopping, such means of online shopping is a boon in itself. You place an order and the product is delivered at your doorstep. Infact the new generation kids are so smart and tech savvy that they themselves do shopping online J… 


This Launch event was at Blue Frog, a popular pub at Lower Parel. The place was nicely decorated for X’mas with stars hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals. The walls had a textured finish, which added dimension to the decor. The seating arrangement was very unique with circular cubicals. The cubicei were set in a random stepwise fashion leaving an open space in the center for the dance floor and a stage in the front for live performances. Seated in one of these cubicals and admiring the set-up, I was teleported onto a cyberspace.


While I was still on some other planet, a sudden entry of Chotta Bheem, kids favorite cartoon character walking and frolicking around brought me back to our Blue Planet !!



For that span of time we all were transformed into kids, making us forget our age and we merrily clicked a few pictures with him. 



After all the selfies with the kid’s favourite Toon character, we were offered drinks and starters. Followed by mouthwatering lunch. Here are some pics of what we hogged on.







Now was the time for main event and discussion. Kalpana Behara was first to begin. She shared her blogging experience and discussed about writers block that some of us experience in our blogging phase. 


Then there were panel of experts from Flipkart, Chotta Bheem, Disney India and Mattel India sharing their experiences & answering the bloggers queries.


This was followed by Indiband performance – ‘The Blunder in the Code’ and ‘Who the Hell is Alex’, which got all of us to sing along. 


After all the foot tapping and singing we were asked to get into groups of 10 and enact Ads using any 10 kids products from Flipkart. This was like an Ad-mad contest which finally culminated with a tie between team #1 and #2.

After all these enthusing kiddy activities how would we forgo our cute little Chotta Bheem, so we got him home as a cuddly soft toy and called it a Day !!