- Every industry has its own way of how things shake out. In automobile industry, its essential to have some form of localization to succeed. In the smartphone industry, unless you are Apple, cut-throat pricing will eventually take you down.
- For the e-commerce industry, the strategy is to sacrifice profits to scale, gain size and eventually kill off your competitors.
- The e-commerce industry in India has raised $3 billion in the last few weeks alone with announcements of Flipkart’s $1 billion funding and Amazon’s $2 billion funding.
- It is now clear that the market here has reached an inflection point. Amazon’s announcement is also indicative of the fact that eventually the war is going to end with either of them going down, and not in acquisitions.
- Moreover, Amazon, which has so far been unsuccessful for various reasons in the BRIC market, has something to prove.
- In the process, smaller horizontal players such as Infibeam, ShopClues are left with 3 options. Be acquired, fade out slowly or make it to the big league. With the current scenario, the 2nd option seems more likely.
- It will be interesting to see the fate of specialist dealers such as Lenskart, Jabong, HealthKart and whether they can successfully retain independencies and grow.
- Speculations of larger players such as TATA and Reliance may also very well disrupt the present Flipkart-Amazon-Snapdeal stand off.
- However, at the end of it all, the consumer will be the winner. Investments are being poured into infrastructure, payment gateways and logistics. The prices will come down.
- This will also create a need for a better class of jobs than what the IT industry offers and may even help elevate Indian internet and technology to a certain level of maturity.
- Read at: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-business/lines-in-the-ecommerce-sand/article6278544.ece