Online shopping in India - how its going to be different from other places

[mekin]

I think online shopping is going to be very different in India from how it works in the USA for the following reasons:

1. A few fundamental things like cheap, reliable and timely postal & courier services are missing. As a result its difficult for existing merchants to just go online & serve customers not close to them geographically. Another

Comments

[the_elcid]

Reliance will do gre8
For now i use EBay coz it has max number of users not just in India but world wide.

[anonymous]

The only I think this would work is introducing a UPS equivalent in India by a well trusted Private player like Reliance. Nobody trusts the Government Postal System (Would you buy a laptop worth 60,000 on ebay from delhi to be posted to Bangalore?).

If the underlying infrastructure is not trusted, replace it.

(They've done that with telephones, now cheap flights), nobody has tapped the potential of a network like Parcel Post.

[shashwat_09675]

I have been talking about this topic with some people here offlate... A fren of mine told me how effective this system is in Singapore. There are quite a few existing retail chains (Fabmall, family mart, big bazaar etc) which can be combined together in the price comparison model. The metro cities traffic in our country is a pretty big booster for online shopping to pick up.

Even if you make an online store for seperate malls (ex. forum or blore central). Groceries, books, music/movies Cds, movie tickets even stationary and the best of all your websites model of text book packages... I'm sure its gonna appeal to a huge crowd which is not interested in spending time struggling in traffic to buy these items and rather spend their time in leisure activities.

In fact I think soon thats gonna be the only way in which retail stores will be able to distinguish themselves with the other players in the market.

Do you guys have some plans in progress for Indain online shopping?

Internet shopping - will take time in India

[anonymous]

The approach to internet shopping will have to be through mobile phones and not through desktop. Unlike in US where each and every household has a desktop or laptop, the common indian man does not have a pc. Also if the idea has to become popular in India it will have to be in languages. Come to think of it why do the ads in Hindi click over the ads in English.

[anonymous]

Nice discussion, guys. I live in the USA and was looking into the modalities re: sending gifts to folks in India.

>> [A few fundamental things like cheap, reliable and timely postal & courier services are missing.]

Does that mean if I gift an electronic item to someone in India, via rediff.com, say, there's a possibility that it might arrive damaged, if at all it arrives? Is that the state of things?

Just wanted to be aware of things.

Ranga

[mekin]

I am sure rediff would use a more reliable & slightly expensive courier service.
For them to exist, they would have to provide a good service to their users (I am not being their guarrantor)

The difference is that the courier service will be more expensive & the cost will be passed on to the user, also it might not connect all parts of india & very unlikely to take goods rurally.

[anonymous]

Sure, thanks.

Ranga