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.