Flipkart launches e-books app for iOS, Windows Phone, browser

The apps will sync across all platforms; the company also plans to add Marathi and Bengali books by the next quarter

Flipkart currently has over 250,000 e-books in its digital catalogue, and plans to raise that to 1 million.

After a major funding round of $200 million last month, Flipkart’s next big announcement has been to widen its scope in the Indian e-book market. The company already had an Android app through which users could read e-books they bought via Flipkart. On Wednesday, it announced apps for iOS and Windows Phone, along with a browser-based reader, to read books on your computer. All the readers are free to download and use.

“Providing seamless content, regardless of platforms, will be a big part of our strategy to further strengthen this position and extend it to the digital space,” says Ravi Vora, senior vice-president, marketing. The apps will also sync across platforms, so you could read on your computer and then switch to your phone, without having to try and find your page. The apps will also let you read the first 10% of any book even before buying it.

“We’re particularly bullish on the iPad, which lends itself really well to reading, and today, you also see a wave of new, large-screened Android devices. Users now have a lot of options and it makes sense to be device agnostic, instead of tying your books to just one device,” says Mekin Maheshwari, head, payments and digital media.

Apart from the new readers, the company also announced that it will be focusing more closely on Indian language writing, and will work with publishers to digitize more books from Indian authors. As of now, Flipkart already has books available in Hindi and English. The company plans to add Marathi and Bengali books by the next quarter.

While Maheshwari wouldn’t share the total number of downloads or even titles on Indian language books, he feels that this is going to be a big area for future growth, particularly as more and more people start to use smart devices.

Flipkart entered the e-books space in November, around six months after their MP3 store launched, putting both under the Flyte banner. Flipkart exited the digital music space in May, owing to issues such as lack of buyer interest and issues with micropayments and piracy.

It’s worth noting that the problems of a small user base and piracy will be the case even with e-books. Maheshwari would not reveal the total number of users buying e-books from Flipkart, but believes that piracy is a smaller problem for books than it is for music. “Unlike music, books have never really been DRM (Digital Rights Management, a form of copy protection) free, so piracy isn’t a big issue. There were also fewer content models, like streaming, which definitely makes it easier to sell books.”

Flipkart currently has over 250,000 e-books in its digital catalogue, and plans to raise that to 1 million. “We’ve been working with local publishers, helping them to digitize their catalogues. We’ve already got the best reach in Indian authors writing in English, and guys like Amish (Tripathi) and Chetan Bhagat, whose physical books sell well. They’ve also been highly successful in the digital format. The other big thing for us is going to be the support of more Indian languages. Our technology is in place, now we’re helping the publishers to get the content to us.”

The company already sells a smattering of Hindi e-books, and will be expanding this catalogue, besides adding Marathi and Bengali language books in the next quarter. As more publishers come on board, Flipkart will add more languages too.

While all these updates might make the app more appealing to users, some of the issues that were faced by the MP3 store remain. Apart from that, there is also competition from Amazon.com Inc.—the company has a long history in this space, and its prices are very competitive. It already offers many of the same features that Flipkart is now bringing, and if you already have a history of buying e-books from Amazon, or own one of the popular Kindle e-book readers, then you’re locked into the Amazon market, and wouldn’t want to buy from a second seller.

Ashish Hemrajani | The original ticket master The founder and CEO of BookMyShow on big deals, building reserves and survival

Ashish Hemrajani | The original ticket master

The founder and CEO of BookMyShow on big deals, building reserves and survival

Ashish Hemrajani explains the monopoly his company has in the online ticketing space as some sort of “last man standing” phenomenon

“I am like the Forrest Gump guy,” says Ashish Hemrajani referring to the 1994 movie. “The whole world has gone around and I haven’t moved out of a 1km radius.”

Hemrajani, the founder and chief executive officer of Bigtree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd that owns the website Bookmyshow.com, which offers ticketing for cinemas, plays, concerts and live events, gives further evidence to the claim. He lives in the house he was born in Juhu, Mumbai, he went to school (Maneckji Cooper Education Trust) and college (Mithibai) in the same area. “Then,” the 38-year-old says, “I travelled 30km for two years to Sydenham (College of Commerce and Economics) for my MBA. That’s as far as I went.”

Professionally, though, Hemrajani has gone farther than many.

In mid-July, Bookmyshow.com signed a five-year deal worth Rs.1,000 crore with PVR Ltd to sell the latter’s tickets online (BookMyShow was previously managing PVR’s ticketing system but was not selling its tickets on the BookMyShow site). Hemrajani says the biggest gain from this deal is for the end consumer. “All I own is your user experience. The user owns us. I am giving that extra experience in one place,” he says. The deal adds 89 PVR cinemas (including Cinemax India Ltd, which the company acquired in January) with over 380 screens to BookMyShow’s existing tie-up with over 1,500 screens.

Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint

About 85% of their sales comes from movie tickets, says Hemrajani, but 45% of the revenue comes from other properties like the Indian Premier League (IPL), Formula One Indian Grand Prix, music events like NH7 in Pune, at blueFROG, among others. He believes there will be some equitable distribution of revenue in the future—“it will settle down at 50-50%”. His focus now will be on spreading into smaller towns since most of the current business comes from the top 4 metros. “The growth from class 2-3 towns is phenomenal, not because of the Internet on computers, but because of the mobile phone. BookMyShow does 26% of its transactions on mobile—the highest in the country. It’s (the app) a bit clunky but it works,” he says.

We meet at the Olive Bar & Kitchen at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse in Mumbai. Dressed in a black shirt tucked into jeans, Hemrajani has just finished a late lunch and gets a coffee as the restaurant begins to slowly wind down. He sinks into the cushions by the large windows, unperturbed by the unusually bright sunlight streaming in, after weeks of cloudy or rainy weather. He fires his answers swiftly, like an accurate automatic weapon, with figures and dates flowing in smoothly.

His parents, children of the Partition, moved to Mumbai to fulfil certain aspirations they had for their children. “Somewhere, genetically, that risk-taking ability seeped in,” Hemrajani says. He learnt piano while his elder sister learnt the guitar—“it should have been the other way round,” he says, laughing—while also doing speech lessons. There was a comforting routine then to life—trips to Jehangir Art Gallery on weekends, meals at Samovar and Sea Lounge, which his father could barely afford, buying LPs at Rhythm House, visits to the beach in Juhu…a routine which he still keeps up with. “Three generations of watchmen know me, the postman has seen me grow—these relationships have not changed in 38 years. Only that I lived in two different cities: I was born in Bombay and am today in Mumbai.”

He has told his story of enlightenment often enough—it came under a big tree while backpacking in 1999 in South Africa, when he happened to listen to a radio programme promoting tickets for rugby. The idea marinated in his head the whole trip, culminating into a decision while lying on a bunk bed towards the end of the trip, after a night of binging at Stellenbosch. The name of the company comes from the location of this realization.

Shortly after, Hemrajani quit his two-year-old first job in advertising agency Hindustan Thompson Associates, where he was working then, persuaded friends Parikshit Dar and Rajesh Balpande to leave their jobs as well, to start selling movie tickets through telephone and Internet in 1999, at the height of the dotcom boom. Private equity firm Chase Capital Partners invested Rs.2.5 crore, selling their stake in Bigtree to News Corp. two years later before the dotcom bust. His number of employees went from 150 to 6, he had to shift offices and reassess all priorities.

“Today, kids know valuations and have accelerator programmes,” Hemrajani says. “They have learnt from people’s failures. Then, the ecosystem did not exist. I got calls from headhunters about jobs but I wanted to continue. That was one of my toughest decisions. I knew we had to ride the ecosystem.”

The company now employs over 300 people in offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai—where Bigtree bought Ticketgreen.com in December for an undisclosed sum—New Zealand and Australia. Network 18 had invested in the company in 2007, at the same time when an intern came up with the name Bookmyshow.com for the portal. US venture capitalist Accel Partners put in $18 million (about Rs.100 crore) in August last year.

“We have retained most of it,” says Hemrajani of this investment. “We have some plans besides the acquisition of Ticketgreen; we have some capital expenditure on infrastructure and some work around access control at events. We have a radio campaign. We built that war chest to run a series of experiments but also if the market changes and becomes irrational. In India, people are short of ideas, heavy on money. There is too much money chasing too few ideas, which leads to irrationality.”

"IN PARENTHESIS: Ashish Hemrajani watches movies only during daytime, Monday to Thursday. It’s not just because tickets are cheaper, he says, but also because there are fewer people and it’s easier to find parking. Most importantly, though, weekends are reserved for sailing. A member of the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, Bombay Sailing Association and Colaba Sailing Club, between October and April, he has been sailing every Saturday and Sunday for the last decade or so. “There are no boundaries here unlike other sports,” he says. “The ocean is your boundary. If you want to race to Dubai you can; you will not win though. The rules are used to disadvantage opponents not advantage yourself. The elements of nature are not in your control; one mistake is catastrophe as the boat can capsize. On water, you are screaming. The moment you come to land, everybody’s friends. Sailors know how to dissolve their egos as soon as they step out of the water.”"

He explains the monopoly his company has in the online ticketing space as some sort of “last man standing” phenomenon. “I have seen two dotcom booms and busts. When the tide pulls back, asWarren Buffett says, you know who’s been skinny dipping. Every time the tide pulled back, like in 2002 and 2008, people fell. In 1999-2000, I had 21 (competitors), in 2007, I had 27. I had to let go of my employees. I have learnt a few lessons in the process, because of which we have now the lowest churn—it’s more expensive to rehire, retrain and it’s bad karma—and highest retention.

“If you don’t earn money, it’s not dhanda (business). Anything that’s free has no value. Don’t be excitable when the going’s good, or feel bad when the times are low. And do not fear junk competition.”

As we move to the outdoor section, to help the Olive staff clear up and prepare for their next cycle, a gentle breeze carries odours from the nearby stables. Hemrajani races into some heavy statistics in explaining how much more is left to be done: 3.6 billion movie tickets sold every year, 1.4 billion Indians, 140 million with Internet access, 20 million transacting customers, 20 million “kids” on Facebook who will get their first pay cheque in a few years, 700 million handsets, 78 million smartphones and 18 million data connections.

“How do you reach out to everyone? It would be foolhardy to say we will do travel, etc. I would rather do something well than be a generalist and screw it up,” Hemrajani says. “Indians are impatient—they want to be millionaires tomorrow. You have to find the balance between doing more and doing the right thing.”

Hemrajani says he is an extrovert in a social situation, able to strike a conversation with anyone, but takes time to make friends. He also has a sharp sense of observation, he adds, and an eye for the future.

“People have the same aspirations, they may want the same Old Navy bag,” he says, pointing to the 11-year-old sack with no label by my side. “The Web is the only way. The possibilities are immense.”

Flipkart.com The campaign breaks through the clutter

Flipkart.com

The campaign breaks through the clutter

The ad spoofs the format of news TV debate shows

Founder and chief executive officer of The 120 Media Collective, a Mumbai-based multi-platform content company, Saluja has made television commercials and other content for Unilever, Nokia, L’Oréal, Pepsi, Sony, Johnson & Johnson and Volkswagen.

CAMPAIGN

The new ad for online retailer Flipkart.com titled, “India Wants to Know”, by Happy Creative Services, extends the children-as-adults concept. The ad spoofs the format of news TV debate shows. The question and answer format is used to address consumer concerns about online shopping. Tag line: Ab sirf shopping nahin, Flipkart karo (Don’t just shop, do Flipkart).

What did you think of the ad?

Talk about tapping into the zeitgeist. Who isn’t sick and weary of what our news channels subject us to? Who better to take potshots at than good old Arnab (Goswami, of Times Now)? Juxtaposing the news setting with the Flipkart kid world just dials up the amusement quotient to another level. People always seem tickled by the Flipkart kid world. While it’s brought a smile to my face, I’ve been a tad less enthusiastic about the campaigns than the average person. That is, until now. This iteration hits the sweet spot and judging from my Facebook newsfeed, they’ve definitely scored big across the board this time around.

Does their decision to use children in ads work?

Of course, it does. It’s allowed them to break through the clutter and create an ownable world that’s limitlessly extendable. It’s probably a casting nightmare but well worth the effort.

What must e-commerce sites keep in mind while planning their campaigns?

Cost per customer acquisition is a key success metric for start-ups and e-commerce players. As a result, production costs and media ad spend need to be kept to a minimum. E-commerce is such a crowded space that it’s clearly a case of “differentiate or die”. While online media spend is far more efficient, one player spending heavily online compels the competition to do the same. At the end of the day, he who has deeper pockets has a greater chance of success. That’s where creativity can be a trump card in helping bring down that acquisition cost number.

Any other ad that you think is cool in this category?

E*TRADE’s “Monkey” from Superbowl 2000 that features an old man and his odd-looking younger companion sitting still, then joined by a monkey who puts on some music and starts to dance on a chair. His human cohorts accompany him by clapping in the most ridiculous manner you’ve ever seen. It ends with a super that says, “Well, we just wasted 2 million bucks. What are you doing with your money?” referring to the exorbitant ad rates during the Superbowl. Gutsy. Cheeky. Brilliant.

Around 60% of Jabong.com’s revenue comes from small towns: founder

The online retailer is growing at high double digits, says founder Arun Chandra Mohan

Arun Chandra Mohan says Jabong.com gets around 14,000 orders daily

Arun Chandra Mohan , founder of Jabong.com, said the online fashion retailer is getting more than half of its sales from small towns, where people do not have access to brands such asDKNY and Benetton. The retailer’s sales have increased in “high double digits” in the past three months, Mohan said in an interview, even as the Indian economy grew at 4.4% in the three months ended June, the weakest pace since 2009.

In less than 20 months, Jabong.com has become the third-most visited online shopping website after Myntra.com and Flipkart.com, according to a 22 August report by comScore Inc.—an online traffic measurement company.

Jabong.com, a part of the Germany’s Rocket Internet group, gets around 14,000 orders daily, Mohan said. More than 60% of India’s 73.9 million Internet users visit online retail websites, spending an average of 28.4 minutes, less than what people spend in countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and even the worldwide average of 84.3 minutes, according to thecomScore report. Edited excerpts:

You launched Jabong last January. How has the journey been so far?

It has been a roller coaster ride but phenomenal. We are playing a very key role in shaping the Indian retail industry.

Online retail still accounts for a minuscule $600 million compared with India’s $518 billion retail industry, according to a report published by Technopak Advisors.

There is no robust infrastructure to meet the demand of the consumer. It is either completely unorganized or then there are retailers like Future Group who are all concentrated in a very small metropolitan area of the country. In India, e-commerce is not going to be another channel. It is going to be the channel. It’s going to be the main pie. We already see this in China, where the market is growing at 50% and forecasts say that by 2015 it will be the single largest market in the world in value. India is very similar to China. Indian e-commerce will be where China is now (China became the world’s second largest e-tail market with an estimated $210 billion revenue in 2012, according to a March report byMcKinsey Global Institute) in 4-5 years time. It is basically that the supply infrastructure is not there and it is not going to be there.

Is this working for you?

Today, 50-60% of our sales are coming from small towns. These are not the top 45 cities, but the next rung after that. Very often, e-commerce is the first way that our consumers access brands like Benetton and DKNY. They never had access to any of these brands before.

The sustainability of online retailers in India remains suspect. We are yet to see a profitable venture...

There have been questions about that. But now after 18 months of operations, it just proves that having foresight, vision and relentless focus on execution really pays off. We are extremely pleased with the growth of industry and our role in shaping it.

The perception is that growth is driven by investments. If no funding is available then there is no visibility and no growth.

We are running a business. We are also here to make money. I don’t think any sensible e-commerce company is burning money like crazy. Everyone is very pragmatic. Like retail, costs are high and margins are low so you need to think twice before spending money. When we were entering the market there was a lot of stupidity that has significantly gone down. Unless you take a medium- to long-term view, you will never find answers and never make the right decisions.

The fact is that the Internet is very cheap. Add to that a young population with high aspirations. The share of income they (the youth) spend on discretionary activities of looking good or feeling good is substantial.

How value conscious is this segment? Are promotions and discounts the only way to lure them to shop online?

If you really take the evolution, e-commerce in India started with discounts and deals. That was the first wave of companies like Snapdeal, Groupon, etc. That was the main driver for the consumer to come in besides availability. But most of the stuff that was on discount was not really aspirational. It was not really fashion. One can easily sell products that are three seasons old. That would not really excite anyone. So it is discounted. However, for fashion, there is a genuine lack of supply. What we are seeing is that consumers want the latest, something that is in fashion. Our consumers want fresh season stuff. They know how they want to look and feel.

Who is this consumer?

This is the Indian middle class. Over 85% of our consumers are the Indian middle class. This means that they have access to the Internet. They have bought books and tickets online and have now evolved to buying fashion.

Is the slowdown in the Indian economy affecting your business?

The last three months have been great. We haven’t seen a slowdown in our growth. We have been growing at high double digits.

By when will you be profitable?

We have clear timelines to get there. We have made strong progress in the last 8-9 months and we will beat those targets.

Slowdown creates opportunity for e-commerce to grow faster: Sachin Bansal

Bansal speaks about expanding into new product categories and the shift to the marketplace model

Flipkart.com, which recently raised $200 million from investors, including Accel Partners and Tiger Global, is the face of e-commerce in India. Having launched its marketplace platform earlier this year, the company has also attracted the attention of regulators, who have banned foreign direct investment (FDI) in e-commerce. In February, Flipkart effectively moved to Singapore, setting up Flipkart Holdings Singapore that owns and runs the technology and the back-end, and selling the front-end operationWS Retail Services to a group of Indian investors. The change came even as India’s Enforcement Directorate was probing the company for violations of India’s foreign exchange laws. Indian laws do not prohibit foreign investment in a marketplace.

In an interview, co-founder and chief executive Sachin Bansal spoke about expanding into new product categories, the shift to the marketplace model (WS Retail is one of the sellers in Flipkart’s marketplace), the status of the probe by the Enforcement Directorate and working with co-founder Binny Bansal. Edited excerpts:

You started out as a bookseller and then entered many product categories over the years. What are the things or criteria for entering a new category?

E-commerce in India is a land grab opportunity. We see an opportunity in almost every category. The expansion is limited only by our capabilities because the market is huge. Reliability and scalability on the supply side are the main things.

Which new product categories are you looking at entering currently?

We’re already in most categories. What I’m looking forward to is (selling) large items—large electronics, refrigerators, TVs, washing machines, furniture, large sporting gear. There is a very big market for heavy, bulky items. We don’t have these and we’re focusing on how to solve it. It requires a different supply chain investment and we are going to make it. Another category is fashion. We are in it but we can make it huge. In India, the market for clothes and shoes is bigger than electronics.

You’ve exited some categories, online music store Flyte for example. What went wrong?

Our understanding of the market was not deep enough. But in a sense the launch of the product itself was the test for the market. Sometimes, we need a sense of over optimism otherwise you will never try things.

Flipkart launched its marketplace platform earlier this year. Do you own inventory or are you a pure marketplace?

All our sales (to consumers) happen through the marketplace now. We do keep some inventory. Some of the inventory we keep and sell it to our sellers. There are other B2B (business to business) players who buy from us as well. So our own inventory is for B2B sales and as support for sellers. We have 700 sellers now and we’re ramping up. In a year’s time, we want to get to 10,000 sellers.

When did you sell WS Retail (the company’s former front-end business)? What kind of business relationship does Flipkart have with WS Retail now?

It’s a seller on Flipkart now. It’s our largest seller in fact. The change happened a few years back when we made it a separate company. We started separating the front-end and backend of the business in 2009 and our idea was to get separate investors. As regulations changed, we had to sell it.

What’s the status of the Enforcement Directorate probe and what questions have they asked you?

Without getting into the specifics, government bodies have the right to ask questions and our job is to comply and answer their questions. We feel that we’re completely on the right side of the law and completely compliant with regulations. I wouldn’t be able to get into more specifics.

How much of your business comes from mobile and at what rate is that growing?

Twenty percent of our traffic comes from mobile, excluding tablets. 3G speeds are improving, rates have come down … The rate of growth on mobile is exponential.

What are the important things that you’ve learnt about the Indian consumer?

Lately, there have been service issues at Flipkart (regarding delivery of large items). We got a lot of negative publicity about it and rightly so. We did not meet our promises. But we are fixing that and we’ll come back … What that taught me is Indian consumers care deeply about service. That’s what our premise was when we started Flipkart. There were always players who were cheaper than us. We said we’ll differentiate Flipkart on service. And our success is living proof that Indian consumers greatly appreciate quality service and give more importance to service than just cheap prices.

E-commerce is a small sector right now. Even so, has the weak economy affected your growth?

E-commerce is too small right now to be influenced by macro factors. The slowdown possibly creates an opportunity for e-commerce to grow faster. If you look at Amazon, it’s faster after the recession of 2008. Consumers become more price and value conscious during a slowdown. Offline stores because of their high cost structure struggle during slowdown.

For entrepreneurs there’s always the question, when do I sell? What about you? Are you building to sell?

There are pros and cons for both sides. It’s about what the founders want. We want to build the company.

It can be one the largest e-commerce companies in the world; we can be in the top five. India can produce that kind of a company, given the number of the consumers. So we want to be independent and build the company. Our role models are not companies which have sold, but companies like Airtel andInfosys, which have built large businesses.

You’ve raised more money than probably any other start-up in India. What kind of pressure are you under from investors?

Investors invest money obviously where they can make money. From an investor point of view Flipkart is a gold mine. The market is huge and there’s no limit to growth and then you look at our leadership position—we’re more than a third of the market. Then you look at the kind of management talent here … If you put all that together the answer is obvious. I don’t feel the pressure. It’s a personal thing. The kind of investors we have are not just money investors. Tiger Global for example has 50-60 e-commerce investments. So they bring a great perspective.

As you grow larger how is your board evolving?

We want to make our board more independent. We have one independent director right now, Rajesh Magow, the CEO of MakeMyTrip. He’s added a lot of value and we’ll be looking to add more independent board members.

E-commerce is a new sector. Is it challenging to explain what you do to regulators? What regulations do you want passed?

We work very hard with trade and government bodies to build a case for e-commerce. They are taking some time to understand … On the regulations front, we would like to see stability. There’s uncertainty right now and it should not always be a catch up game. The definition of group company is an example—regulations on that have changed a few times and it’s still a bit ambiguous.

Flipkart has seen many executive departures at the senior management level. Is the company struggling to retain talent and what do you do to reduce attrition?

If someone thinks Flipkart is not the right place, or that there’s something better out there, there’s not much you can do. But trying to do a better job while hiring is one thing we can do.

When you hire, you don’t just look for capabilities. It’s also the alignment on what the company needs and what the hires want to do. We can do that better and we’ve been doing better after making a few mistakes. In any case, the number of senior executives who have left Flipkart is not more than for any other company.

It’s essential for start-ups that their founders have functional relationships, at the least. What are the dynamics between Binny Bansal and you?

Trust and understanding between founders are very important. Mistakes happen. There are disagreements and sometimes I would decide to do something because I was so passionate about it but it turned out to be the wrong decision. What we’ve been able to do is not blame each other for mistakes. If we’re not able to come to an agreement, the guy who’s more passionate about the issue will take the decision. But we never do things like, ‘I told you so.’ That’s wrong, even if you had told the other so! Having complementary skills is also important. Binny is able to analyse a lot of data, which I sometimes find difficult. Whereas I come from the other way—sometimes I form a hypothesis and then look at data.

India working on formulating guidelines on e-commerce

Consumer affairs ministry has sought suggestions from other ministries that include finance and IT to carry the plan forward

Consumer affairs minister K.V. Thomas says the problems faced by consumers in e-commerce need to be tackled globally since in many cases, buyers, sellers, manufacturers, website owners, payment gateways are located in different countries.

India is mulling formulating a comprehensive guideline to deal with e-commerce, a concept fast catching up in the country.

The consumer affairs ministry has already started working on this and has sought suggestions from other ministries that include finance and IT to carry the plan forward.

“No international level study has been conducted on the subject. However, to formulate a comprehensive policy on the issue, suggestions from other ministries such as ministry of finance, ministry of communications and information technology ...have been sought,” consumer affairs minister K.V. Thomas said in Rajya Sabha on Friday.

Answering a supplementary during the Question Hour, he said the subject of e-commerce was relatively new, but had become extremely crucial due to global digital integration,widespread use of internet and convenience of on-line business transactions.

During the July meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), India had communicated its strong viewpoint supporting regulation of e-commerce to protect interest of global consumers, he said.

“The problems faced by consumers in e-commerce need to be tackled globally since in many cases, buyers, sellers, manufacturers, website owners, payment gateways are located in different countries,” Thomas said.

“India is in close touch with UNCTAD, International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network, etc to ensure global co-operation in the matter,” he said.

To a question on cheating by online marketing companies, Thomas said in such cases, consumers are entitled to get relief in three levels of consumer fora at district, state or national levels.

Intel Capital invests $16 mn in three Asian e-commerce firms

Of the three firms, two are from India—Snapdeal.com and Bright Lifecare that runs Healthkart.com

Intel Capital, one of the largest technology investors, last year invested $352 million across 150 deals globally, with nearly 57% of the funds invested outside the US.

Intel Capital, US chip maker Intel Corp.’s global investment arm, has invested nearly $16 million in three online retail companies in Asia, including two in India—Snapdeal.com and Bright Lifecare Pvt. Ltd, which runs Healthkart.com.

The other investment was in existing portfolio company Reebonz.com, a private luxury goods retailer based in Singapore.

Snapdeal.com is a consumer goods marketplace and Healthkart sells nutrition, health and wellness products.

The investments were made public at the World Economic Forum in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, on Friday.

“We see start-up companies across Asia-Pacific taking advantage of new business opportunities created by the spread of personal computing and broadband Internet access. These technologies allow entrepreneurs to reach new markets and customers, and offer innovative new services that will help to enrich the lives of people across Asia,” said Gregory Bryant, vice-president and general manager, Intel Asia-Pacific, in a statement.

Intel Capital, one of the largest technology investors, last year invested $352 million across 150 deals globally, with nearly 57% of the funds invested outside the US.

Intel Capital started investing in Asia-Pacific in 1998 and has since invested over $2 billion in more than 320 technology companies in the region. At least 60 of these companies have gone public or have been acquired.

Amazon India adds toys, health and personal care products

Amazon adds toys, health and personal care products

The global e-commerce giant continues to add categories of products, and says more will come in time for Diwali

Amazon India on Thursday launched three new categories on its website, and added that more will be coming soon, in time for Diwali. When Amazon.in launched in June, it was selling books, movies and TV shows, and quickly expanded to include electronics devices such as mobile phones, cameras and computers and accessories. The company has now added toys, baby products, and personal care and healthcare appliances; home and kitchen category will be introduced soon.

Amit Agarwal, vice-president and country manager, Amazon India, said in the last three months since the company has been active in India, it has been focusing on three areas “selection, cost and reliability”.

In India, Amazon works as a managed marketplace and not a direct seller, and Agarwal said it has grown from 100 sellers to over 500 by now, and added that the number of sellers who are choosing Amazon’s logistics service (called Fulfillment by Amazon) is also steadily rising.

He added, “On the customer side, we can’t share a country break-up, but with the rising sellers, I think you can infer that customers are also there. Another thing, which we think is very positive, is that the sellers feedback has been that the number of people paying via credit cards is rising compared to cash on delivery payments, which shows increasing confidence.”

With the new categories, Amazon.in has added over 8,500 products, and now claims to offer over 9 million books, over 70,000 products, and over 1.7 million e-books. Agarwal also said the response to the Kindle hardware in India has been encouraging. While he could not share the number of Kindles sold, he said the response has been meeting expectations. Mobile usage of Amazon’s website might have been lower than expected though. Agarwal said, “In a country like India you’d expect everyone to be on mobile... but it’s been only three months and the traction on mobile is very good. Customers are discovering it, and we are committed to the platform, and will continue to develop it.” To that end, Amazon will be launching an India-specific Android app soon, he added.

When asked why these particular categories were chosen for launch at this point, compared to ones that are more established in the Indian e-commerce market (such as apparel), Agarwal said the company is looking at both the ecosystem to see what is feasible, and also looking at unmet customer demands. He added, “Amazon will continue to launch in new categories, and we’re not chasing events with category or products. I told my team that Diwali comes every year, we can pick the categories where we will make an impact.”

He also reiterated that the company still has only one active fulfilment centre, in Mumbai, and said more would be developed over time as the needs in India grow, adding that Amazon has a long-term plan for the market. Asked if recent fluctuations in the rupee might affect these plans, he said, “Our strategy is to focus on the constants for long-term planning. If you look at a month-long or a three-month event and plan for that, then you’re not really planning for growth.”