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 market is still pretty small in terms of numbers. However, we shouldn’t ignore that all factors are slowly moving in favor of eCommerce. Retail is getting more and more organized, availability of global brands is larger than ever, internet penetration is climbing and some internet retailers have started to focus on customer experience as a way to differentiate. Most importantly, and I can personally attest to this one , there are some extremely talented individuals who have recently launched new ventures and are passionate about making a big difference in the eCommerce space in India.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while – Read the rest of this entry »

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. If you execute these well, you can not only create uncontested market space, you can make it difficult for others to compete in the game. These ideas do require some innovation –however, I am not talking about a significant technological innovation – I am talking about innovation in service offerings that can help you leap outside the traditional industry boundaries. I have written most of my articles around B2C opportunities, in this article I will focus primarily on the B2B opportunities within the online space in India.

So what are some of these ideas? Well, before discussing the specific ideas, I want to start with some of the key traits of these business models. Most of the ideas that I will discuss have one common theme – low cost of initial acquisition and high switching costs. Read the rest of this entry »