E-commerce is a new dream for India Inc

Source: Deccan Herald

Name a business segment which is a decade old, all players, big or small, are losing money and yet investors are ready to pump in more and more funds.

eBay goes after Amazon with fee changes for sellers

Source: ET
SAN FRANCISCO: eBay Inc said on Tuesday it will overhaul fees for sellers on its online marketplace, stepping up competition with Amazon.com Inc .

MBA sabziwallas strike green gold

Source: TOI

AHMEDABAD: They have an MBA from the most sought-after business school in the country but are busy selling vegetables.Nirmal Kumar and Kaushlendra Kumar — both graduates from IIM-Ahmedabad, have brought respectability to the business of vegetable selling through their innovative ventures.

How e-commerce will click in future

Things may not be as upbeat today as they were a while ago, but online businesses are only going to get bigger, says the industry as it firms up plans to cash in on the expected boom

Much of the second phase of the e-commerce boom in India, if one can call it that, will be automatic, say experts. Of course, new concepts, innovations and getting the business model right will be the enablers and growth drivers. Ankur Warikoo, CEO of Groupon India, a daily deal site, points out that India has entered the second phase of e-commerce and online shopping with only serious players left in the fray now. Others, both big and small, have either shut shop or have merged and consolidated. “The big churn has taken place and people have realised e-commerce is not child’s play.”

E-commerce is a new dream for India Inc

Confused? It is the online retail business or online retail e-commerce (e-com). The 50-player retail e-com is growing at over 40 per cent a year, every month around five new ones jump on to the bandwagon and investors keep cutting cheques with a hope that there is a pot of gold at the end of the road.

Take the case of India’s largest retail e-com company Flipkart.com which recently raised $20 million in its third round of funding from a venture capital (VC), valuing it in excess of Rs 1,000 crore. Though the company has already raised $31 million, there are rumours that a very large VC fund is planning to invest another $150 million in the company raising its valuations to $1 billion or Rs 5,000 crore.

Then there are others like Myntra.com which raised $40 million, Indiaplaza that raised $8 million so far, and daily deals site Snapdeal.com’s parent Jasper Infotech that recently raised $40 million from VCs. Even global majors like eBay.com (entered six years ago) and Amazon.com are present in the Indian space.

InfoEdge to write-off entire investment

Starting my first blog on collection of important Indian e-commerce industry news.


E-commerce industry in India is coming out of its nascent stage, but still more than 90% of the websites are in loss. This news clearly states that industry is still reeling blood and will have to take measures to start having healthy bottomline.
New Delhi:  Internet firm InfoEdge, which owns job portal Naukri.com, today said it will be writing off its entire Rs 29.3 crore investment in online retailing firm Ninety Nine Labels.
In a communication to the BSE, InfoEdge said: “The company will be providing for/writing off its entire investment of about Rs 293 million in Ninety Nine Labels  during the current quarter.” Ninety Nine Labels, which owns the online private sales portal 99labels.com, is run by Ishita Swarup, Anchal Jain and Ankur Prakash, veterans of apparel and communication industries, according to information on its website.

Nexus Partners, Helion Venture invest Rs 54 crore in ShopClues.com

MUMBAI: Two private equity funds Helion Venture Partners and Nexus Partners along with Teruhide Sato, Netprice.com chief executive have invested Rs 54 crore ($10m) in online sales facilitating e commerce firm Shopclues.com to help the company expand to more cities, founding chairman Sandeep Aggarwal said.

ShopClues founded by Sandeep Agarwal, a former Wall Street analyst along with three ecommerce professionals, helps third party merchants to sell online with very low transaction cost. "The investment by these investors is a reflection of the confidence in the business model that has already demonstrated a robust growth in the past 15 months.'' The company had a total of Rs 81 crore ($15 m) with Rs 20 crore ($4m) earlier in the first round from investors including Nexus. The promoters own majority stake in the e-commerce company which is expected to clock Rs 120 crore sales by March 2013.