Retail Dude

So everyone is in recovery mode now after such a long and dark tunnel of recession we are able to see the rays of light coming toward us from the end of it. We are in a transition, and retailers are looking for a platform to jump quickly on the other side. While US retailers are waiting for fall festive season, in India its already festival’s aroma in the air and Indian retailers are leveraging it to it’s extend.  

Indian retail market which is US$ 511 bn. in size and is the fifth largest retail destination globally is becoming lucrative market for international retailers. But due to regulations on FDI in retail, they are still standing on the edge to enter India, and trying different back doors to get them involved in emerging economy which has been ranked as the most attractive emerging market for investment in the retail sector by AT Kearney’s eighth annual Global Retail Development Index (GRDI), in 2009. Ecommerce is definitely the one channel that provides retailers a global presence, but because of physical distances between countries, custom duty and merchandise shipping laws these etailing website ultimately divided into local domains and just serve local countries.

Indian ecommerce market worth approx. US$ 2 bn. and predicted to grow to around $6 billion by 2011. Currently out of which the major chunk comes from travel industry. Etailing only accounts 12% of total ecomm market of India. India’s etailing also divided into two categories –

1.       Online retailing like futurebazaar.com

2.       Online auction/marketplace like ebay.com

While online retailing websites are still struggling for their space, online auction/market place sites rules the virtual market and Ebay is the king of online space of India with about 1.5 mn. unique users per month but still its lame as compared to US ebusiness. Ebay still need to reach the critical masses and this only happen when Indian ecomm business is actually accepted my more people. There are many factors which restricted Indian population to use online channel for shopping but people are overcoming this and are willing to try this channel.

Ebusiness is supposed to be a global visa for retailers and utilizing the same ebay initiated “global easy buy” platform just in the mid of festival season which allows Indian shoppers to buy from international Ebay merchants directly (currently Ebay US) with international shipping and handling facility for all products. But for the international product you have to customs duties and international shipping charges which definitely make that international product little expensive but still u can enjoy global deals while sitting in your home, and even get Harley Davidson jacket delivered just before you going to blow a cracker on diwali. This is not it, ebay is also providing free gifts with your purchases and a mega gift in a lucky draw. Now these freebies can change your perception on international product’s prices.

Ebay again with its innovation trying to dig deeper into virtual market of India to reach the gold mine hidden below it. And I hope as a leader it will soon be able to see the tipping point of it.

Readers give ebay global easy buy a try and happy diwali to you all.

- Prateek

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