Online shopping scene hotting up in India
More merchants & retailers going online:
FutureBazaar joined the ranks of Fabmall (now called indiaplaza)- retail chains that also offer an online shopping experience.
I have always maintained that for success in Indian markets the online offering needs to be supported with a good offline presence.
Shaadi & naukri are good examples of the above ( Read more... )
FutureBazaar joined the ranks of Fabmall (now called indiaplaza)- retail chains that also offer an online shopping experience.
I have always maintained that for success in Indian markets the online offering needs to be supported with a good offline presence.
Shaadi & naukri are good examples of the above ( Read more... )
I am the founder of Bechna.com Shopping and Classifieds and found your blog while doing some research on all the folks out there linking to our site. Very interesting topics on your blog.
You are right that the online shopping space is quite new and sites like ours are just finding a footing in the comparison shopping sphere. We have a long way to go to catch up to sites abroad like shopping.com, dealtime.com, nextag.com and others. Grouping products is not much of an issue even though we still have some work to do to improve in that aspect. The big challenge is that there are not a lot of Indian online stores out there that we can work with - probably only 150 to 200 decent sized Indian online sites with shopping carts. But we are quite optimistic that this is not going to be an issue in a few years with the way online shopping and internet usage in India in general is taking off.
Please do let me know if there is anything I can answer about bechna or my views on price comparison shopping in India. We are always looking at ways to improve the site so any feedback is much appreciated.
Regards,
Deepak
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Your site is a good start & I hope you are able to learn a lot & keep changing as you figure out what works in the Indian comparison shopping space. Wish you luck.
I think you need to be able to get users from mediums other than the internet. SMS is a great channel which has seen very high adoption in india.
As you mention there arent enough online stores. You mention 150-200, but I dont see more than 5-7 on your site for most searches.
But a lot of sellers are not going to come online in a hurry, so I guess you will have to go that distance.
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Very good points in your analysis on Online Shopping in India and how India is different. I am optimistic that the postal network, consumer payment concerns and consumer trust will change in a couple of years.
DoP recently announced an investment of Rs6000 crore to revamp the postal network and private carriers will push along infrastructure improvements. I am confident the delivery systems will step up to meet the increasing consumer demands.
Consumer trust with online shopping is bound to come about with time. Only recently have people started trusting Online shopping even in the US. A survey conducted late last year by JuxtConsult found that there are about 2.2 million active shoppers online. This is only 5% of India's Internet Users but a 40% increase from the year before. And I expect this rapid growth to continue over the next 5 years.
The salaried middle class of India represents the biggest section of online shoppers. But the shift from paying cash to more accountable forms of payment is definitely a valid point that will prevent Indian shoppers from buying online.
Regarding the number of online vendors. Out of the 200 or so online vendors in India I mentioned more than half cater to consumers from outside India and price their products only in dollars. That leaves only 80 to 100 stores selling products with Rupee price tags. Bechna.com is working with this subset of vendors and by the end of the first quarter of 2007 we will be carrying products from 75% of these stores. We haven't yet looked into including products from brick-and-mortar vendors... but that might change during the course of the year.
Regards,
Deepak
deepak@bechna.com
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