This might come as a shock to you or not but it is true. e-bay the online portal for refurbished mobile phones and other accessories is going to be closed on 14th August by Flipkart the company that owns the e-bay platform in India.
e-bay first entered the Indian Market in 2004 and it never ever was able to take a good hold of the opportunity and new portals like Flipkart, Amazon etc came in and took the Indian market in their arms. Surrendering, e-bay was sold to Flipkart but even then it was not so profitable.
“e-bay came to India after they acquired Baazee 14 years and after that, a lot of the initial time was lost in trying to find a space for themselves. I’m not sure that they were clear or committed to the opportunity in India as this country had its own challenges- regulation, technology adoption, access”, said Sanjay Anandaram, a venture capitalist and startup mentor.
Moreover e-bay global business has also begun to falter and its Indian unit had to face the price for it. Since 2014 the company have cut down its employment and scaled down its business. While it continues to have a development centre here, there is no fault in saying that they have lacked in doing what Flipkart and Amazon have failed to do so.
Well, let me bring forward to you another fact. The companies Amazon and Flipkart are not that much rich in India like elsewhere.
Well, let me bring forward to you to an answer by Tyagarajan Sundaresan who is a writer and a C.E.O. too about whether Flipkart is profitable or not.
“It would be pretty evident (even if you were an outsider) that Flipkart is not profitable at this stage. On the obvious side, there are large discounts, COD and the replacement policies. For the more perceptive, the opulence of the packaging for a Rs 250 product or the fact that different items in the same order basket arrive separately and from different warehouses would ring some warning bells. And of course, there is enough data floating around to suggest non-profitability. While the accuracy of most of it is debatable, they are all pointing in the right direction – Flipkart is not profitable as on date.”
Coming back to the original topic Flipkart CEO has announced that e-bay India would be shut and in its place, the company would launch a new platform for used and refurbished goods under its F1 info Solutions & Services subsidiary. Well, let’s hope that this step may be profitable for Flipkart.
Comment down what you think about these e-commerce sites and did you ever order from e-bay?
