Indian ecommerce industry can be easily described as a complicated and exciting maze where Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal are the top three maze-runners. All three online marketplaces are trying every tactic there is to outrun each other.
Whether it is announcing deals or acquiring companies, Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal are going neck-to-neck.
Here’s a look at various strategic moves taken by the three biggies in the recent times, which is enabling them to stay in the top three and fight it out.
Raising funds
As the ecommerce sector in India is still at a nascent stage, maintaining proper flow of funds is of utmost importance. The three etailers know that. Flipkartraised $1.7 billion funds in July this year, Snapdeal bagged $500 million in Augustand Amazon Inc pumped in $2 billion last year in its Indian arm.
Festive Sales War
IOS gave you a running commentary of the recently concluded festive season sales marathon in which Flipkart was the winner, followed by Amazon and Snapdeal. Read about how Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon fared in the 5 days.
Luring Sellers
In the last one year or more, there has been no dearth of seller initiatives by online marketplaces. Whether it was offering incentives during festive sale,assisting sellers, monetary support or investing heavily in seller services, the three players are trying their best to become every online seller’s choice.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Series of acquisitions took place, namely by Snapdeal and Flipkart that revived their market leadership position. Key ones have been Snapdeal-Freecharge, andFlipkart-Myntra.
Besides the above mentioned points, ecommerce leaders have focused on expanding their product & service offerings and reserved capital for ad spends. With mobile platform presented as the next battleground for ecommerce, the top etailers started investing in technology to gain competitive advantage. Right from building artificial intelligent brain to setting up technologically advancedwarehouses with robots, efforts are being made to improve ecommerce technology.
Are any of them making money?
No. Reaching profitability is on every ecommerce players mind but looking at the losses the top marketplaces are making it doesn’t look easy. So out of Amazon, Flipkart and Amazon, whoever manages to reach profitability first will be the winner.
Sumchit Anand, MD of Acquisory Consulting correctly states, “While it is very clear that Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon are the market leaders, the jury is still out on who will turn out to be the winner. The one who starts making money will be the winner. Look at the airlines industry; while most airlines are bleeding, IndiGo has emerged as the winner because it managed to start making money.”
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