eCommerce Blog

Over the past several months, I have been in touch with several bright entrepreneurs who have recently launched or are planning to launch an eCommerce related offering in India.  I am really excited that we have so much focus and energy around eCommerce and I really think that the landscape is about to change in India. There is a perception out there that eCommerce is not really picking up in India and that companies are struggling to scale up their offerings. There is no question that the overall... (more...)

It was about 5 years ago but I still remember when my refrigerator stopped working two days after I ordered it from Sears. It took me more than 8 phone calls to get the situation addressed. I remember calling different customer service hotlines and finally getting a resolution after contacting some internal departments. All this happened when I was working at Sears!! I shared my experience with the appropriate groups in the hopes that others wouldn’t have to go through similar frustration.... (more...)

Wow! What an interesting year! This economy has had a sobering effect across all industries, especially the online industry! Several businesses that appeared to be immune to any down-turn are now thinking hard about survival. However, there are signs that the worst may be behind us. Little rays of sunshine are visible in the form of new ventures and start-ups that have done extremely well despite of the recession. I think the last 12-15 months have forced everyone to think hard about no-frills business... (more...)

It is about 6 weeks before Christmas. One can feel the holiday spirit in the air. However, something is missing. Even though one can see people shopping in the malls, there is a general gloominess in the air due to the worsening economy. The coming months look certain to bring more turmoil. Even if events do not turn out to be quite as bad as those of recent weeks, it is still highly likely that we will – in the words of US treasury secretary, Paulson – live in “extraordinary times”... (more...)

The stakes are getting high in the eCommerce space in India. As more and more online retailers enter the market, they are driving up the cost of customer acquisition. Although this level of entry in the eCommerce market is good from a long term perspective, the challenge is that most entrepreneurs don’t have the resources or capital to wait for years before they can see some signs of profitability. The good news is that there are still some business models out there, which are mostly untapped.... (more...)

I am not a big fan of Office 2007 interface, but I love its blogging capabilities. I can just write a normal word document and then directly post it to my Wordpress account – with one click of a button. It is even cooler than the “One Click checkout” at Amazon! This had been working great for me – until now, that is! I accidentally published a draft post that had nothing more than some of my random thoughts.  Anyway, if you are subscribed to an offline reader such as Google... (more...)

In one of my previous posts, I had extended the invitation to Commercewiki readers to contribute to this blog. This post is by one of the readers – Sachin Singhal who has done a great job in articulating the profitability situation of eCommerce in India. Thanks Sachin for your contribution – comments are welcome from everyone. Yesterday I was listening to Avril Lavigne’s song “Tomorrow is a different day” and certainly believe it to be true when it comes to e-commerce industry in... (more...)

The unorganized retail business in India thrives on personalization. You walk into a local kirana (grocery) store and the store owner greets you with your name, asks about the family and then gives you a customary 5% discount for being a long time customer. He also knows the brand of tea you like and recommends you a new brand that just came out and then chats with you for few minutes about last night’s 20/20 cricket match. You end up making some impulse purchases while you are chatting and... (more...)

Recently I got an invitation from an old colleague to join Plaxo. I thought to myself – I don’t need another social network to maintain professional contacts, I already have LinkedIn! Within the next 3 days, I suddenly started receiving Plaxo invitations from my other LinkedIn contacts – it almost felt like some sort of evil spam! As much as I hate to sign up for a new site I don’t intend to use, my curiousity got the best of me, and I indulged in accepting the invitation to see what... (more...)

The online shopping space in India is getting more and more crowded . Even though, the overall pie remains small, today’s customers have more options than ever when it comes to online shopping. This certainly is good news for aggregation platforms such as price comparison engines. The more options shoppers have, the greater value they would see in platforms that offer a one stop comparison of products and prices across retailers. Not surprisingly, several comparison shopping platforms have... (more...)