We always knew that the online retail industry was big and growing, but now it seems to be immensely diversifying in a way that is truly mind-boggling. Besides drawing huge investments, the big ecommerce players are also reaching out to more and more sellers in the smaller untapped towns of India, in a bid to dominate the online retail space as soon as possible. Here’s a lowdown of all the updates on ecommerce progress in India.
Big players like Ebay apparently don’t want to guzzle all the profits of ecommerce alone. They wish to share it with hundreds or other small craftsmen, traders or artisans across rural or semi-urban India.
According to reports, eBay has joined hands with one of India’s largest fabric traders body DHMA which will provide a profitable opportunity to local traders and artisans as well as a more diverse plethora of options to shoppers. Last April, eBay had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Confederation of All India Traders, which is associated with over 20,000 small trader associations. This is to give an impetus to small retailers to sell products through its platform. Needless to say, eBay’s seller base increased by about 30% by the signing of this memorandum.
eBay India Head (Retail Exports) Navin Mistry explains the motivation, “Our effort is to bring local and region based sellers on our platform so that they can sell their products to customers in the region, country and even across the globe in over 126 countries,”
Even Flipkart is not far behind in such endeavours. According to Ankit Nagori, senior vice president, marketplaces at Flipkart, “We believe that the local artisans and entrepreneurs deserve a much larger platform than what is available to them today. We are working towards creating a marketplace ecosystem that makes it conducive for them to grow and develop going from local to national players in their categories.”
Living up to its words, Flipkart has launched a special online store where Banarasi weavers can sell their gorgeous saree pieces online. Apparently, Snapdeal also caught up with this move by tying up with India Post to allow Varanasi craftsmen to sell their work online.
On the other hand, Amazon has been working towards expanding its seller base by bringing on small traders and business to list their products on Junglee, a product comparison website. Since Junglee is owned by Amazon, this is more like an undercover move by Amazon, whereas the other home-grown ecommerce players are going all out in proclaiming to the world about their venture to gain more sellers, especially smaller Indian craftsmen and artisans.
In line with their rapid plans for expansion, these ecommerce companies are also working hard to ramp up its logistics and delivery systems. Once again, just as the seller sourcing policy has a distinct Indian flavour; ecommerce companies are also ensuring that they deal with safety challenges that are peculiar to India.
US- based cab hiring app Uber was recently portrayed in bad light because of the Delhi rape case, wherein an unverified cab driver allegedly working for Uber committed this crime. Of course, this was yet another event that raised questions about the employee verification processes followed in ecommerce companies. This was right after a woman was allegedly molested by a delivery boy that visited her home to deliver goods. Since the logistics employees of ecommerce companies have a personal interaction with customers, literally meeting them at the offices or homes- it is very important to ensure that these employees are trustworthy.
Flipkart has explained how it wants to deal with this challenge. Sujeet Kumar, head, WS Retail and ekart Logistics explains, “We don’t want the Uber case to be repeated . I cannot make it 50,000 people (strong). Who will maintain this large number of people? Police verification is difficult. Government does not have a database of employed people.” This is in reference to rapidly expanding its own logistics system. Therefore, Flipkart believes this is another incentive to involve third- party logistics and delivery companies to complete the job. This could also help improve regularity in the employee verification process.
It is great that the Indian government is finally taking notice of the ecommerce boom in India. Recently, they have begun intervening to check if the ecommerce companies are complying with the tax and business laws in India. Many notices and fines have been slapped on leading ecommerce companies in India. The recent being the penalty of over Rs 23 crores being slapped on it, apparently for improper records about sellers held.
Besides cracking down on irregularities in ecommerce, the government can also help in another very useful role. The government could start creating a database of employees working for the industry and could keep a tab on the credentials of logistics’ employees as well. This documentation could be used by ecommerce companies to hire the right employees and thus to improve customer safety, security and to reduce thefts of products sent out for delivery. This would automatically improve the quality of ecommerce operations in India.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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