E-Commerce Battlefield

E-commerce battlefield

In India, we are now witnesses to a modern war of the e-commerce giants. The sense of rivalry still prevails in this war but the battlefield has now been transformed from a terrestrial one to a virtual one. We watch companies like Snapdeal and Flipkart cross swords with each other, using numbers like revenue sales and fulfillment stores as weapons instead of a blitzkrieg of bullets. And, no matter who the reigning champion is, we consumers still stand to benefit greatly.

The opportunity of growth of Indian e-commerce players in the current market scenario is excellent. This is attributed to the fact that China’s e-commerce market is 60 times bigger than that of India, signaling the prodigious scope for expansion of e-commerce activities. Also, India is the second most populous country and it presents a huge demographic for prospective investors. Indians are very rapidly evolving from store shoppers to online shoppers.

This has obviously caught the attention of many companies vying to expand their e-commerce business. Who can forget the Big Billion Day after all? Flipkart officials were rendered into a state of shock when millions of users went into a frenzy to buy a variety of products from their site. Although they faced a lot of technical glitches and left many consumers unhappy, there were countless others who were delirious over the kind of deals they obtained. Flipkart ultimately managed to achieve its target sales of $1 billion and then it took just one day for Amazon to follow suit. Even this top-class e-commerce giant decided to invest another $2 billion. Even though Amazon is currently valued at a very high rate of $148 billion as compared to the $7 billion of Flipkart, it decided to engage in one-upmanship with its rival, sensing the needs of the target audience in India.

Following closely behind Flipkart is Snapdeal, whose idol is Alibaba – the biggest e-commerce company of China. Being a 2.5-year-old newbie in this battlefield, even Snapdeal has set up ambitious goals like “Mission 100” and now, “Mission 500”. Although Kunal Bahl, the co-founder of Snapdeal, is unwilling to share the details of their targets, we do know that they are vigorously trying to increase their sales and give a stiff competition to its rival, Flipkart.