With the possible India entry of Amazon.com, an online retailer, the e-commerce market is set to gain momentum.
Amazon.com will be capitalizing on the growing the e-commerce boom in the region. Its arrival is expected in the market as early as the first quarter of next year. Amazon is in negotiations with top Indian e-commerce players like Flipkart.com, LetsBuy.com and Exclusively.in. Hiring is currently on in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.
Indian players see a huge potential in the e-commerce segment. A few days ago, the $32-billion US telecom major Sprint Nextel Corporation also took the initiative of buying a 74 percent stake in joint venture firm, Sprint Telecom India.
Amazon is also looking to locate a stockroom in Mumbai, which is considered a standard step before entering into the field of e-commerce. Prior to this, Amazon invested in an 80,000 sq ft property at SP Infocity, promoted by Shapoorji Pallonji in Perungudi, Chennai.
In this line of e-commerce, many other foreign firms have also initiated expansion of their growth in the Indian market. E-commerce provides multiple benefits to consumers in the form of availability of goods at lower cost, wider choice and time-saving.
For developing countries like India, e-commerce offers a significant opportunity. E-commerce in India is still in its nascent stage, but better development can make a huge difference. Some of the top names in the e-commerce industry in India today are ASA Systel Communications, Euro link systems, Planet Asia andMyntra.com.
Myntra.com is one of the leading e-commerce companies in India, having expanded into sports lifestyle retailing which is a fairly large market in India. It is well poised to be one of the leading e-commerce players in the country.
Within three months of 2011, Indian VC’s have already invested over $50 million in seven e-commerce companies, a 400 percent increase over the same period just last year. The total Indian e-commerce market was approximately 3 percent of the U.S. market last year ($6.7 billion versus $227.6 billion).
It is expected that total retail sales will grow from $395.96 billion in 2011 to $785.12 billion by 2015.
By Abhilasha Sharma
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