ecommerce revolution in india

Way back in the year 2000, a website changed the way people used to shop, you are right, we are talking about the infamous BAAZEE.COM (now eBay.in). Bazee.com was the first online shopping (auction based) portal in India. Very soon companies like Indiatimes & rediff jumped in the pool, however, bazee was still different, because, on baazee you had a chance to win an auction even for 1 Re.

Indian consumers have long been harassed by poor customer service (in offline shopping), inferior products, hyped products, inflated prices, no way to complain, baazee sensed that, and it launched in way, where they had a feedback system. They were empowering consumers by letting them express their views and complaint resolution acted as icing on cake. Baazee soon became 1st choice of every online purchase enthusiast. Word spread like fire, people were now more confident in buying online.

As the years passed, baazee was hit by an infamous MMS scandal, some guy though of making a quick money by selling some obscene mms scandal on baazee.com, which acted as end of baazee. Soon baazee was taken over by world ecommerce leader eBay and it all started really good. They were on the baazee principals initially - caring for the customers, caring for sellers, providing fast resolution and all. even if you check today, eBay.in is the most successful shopping portal in India, selling an item with average pricing of Rs 1500 every second.Following eBay lot of other players came aggressively the market, to name a few - indiatimes shopping, rediff shopping, infibeam, india varta, and few launched affiliate based shopping portals like talash and tajonline. There is another shopping portal with a totally different concept you watch the live demonstration of the product on T.V before you buy it, yes we are talking about homeshop18 (however they lost their way in the mid and started selling cheap Chinese products to exploit the consumers further).

Lets take these portal one by one, we will discuss their merits and demerits:

1. Indiatimes Shopping:Merits: good network, good reach to consumers (thanks to their parent company "Times of India", lot of payment options to customers, very competitive prices. Demerits: Bad customer service, bad after sales service from vendors ( which happens because of delay in payment to their vendors), slow delivery takes almost 10-15 days for customer to reach the product, some times even a month.
2. Rediff shopping : They started off by providing free and fastest (till date it is the fasted email service). Merits: lightening fast speed of website, amazing options of products, very competitive pricing, acceptable delivery time. Demerits: No control on vendors.
   
3. Tajonline: They laid foundation of affiliate marketing in India, they have more than 150 websites affiliated to them which are ranked very high on search engines. Merits: wide variety of products, good customer support, good vendor management. Demerits: prices are slightly higher than other portals. but I guess that is acceptable when we get good service.
4. Talash.com: same base as Tajonline more or less.
   
5. Homeshop18: Homeshop18 introduced a new concept in the ecommerce, backed by network 18 media, they launched a dedicated channel for their shopping portal, providing live demonstration of their products and consumers could actually see the product working before purchasing. Sounds good so far. It instantly changes consumers perspective. Merits: live demo of the product, 15 days money back guarantee, dedicated team of 700 customer service professional (which are for the service of the homeshop18 however, naming them customer service is just an eyewash) Demerits: slow delivery, cheap chinese products, unhappy vendors, less range of products, highly inflated prices.

trust me this article is not about them, Now that, we have done an analogy of the almost all the leading shopping portals in India, how about, a shopping portal which has following: Branded and trusted product all major brands like Nokia, Micromax, Samsung, Apple, Intex, Maxx, Motorola, Casio, Tupperware, Equity Appliances, Videocon, LG, Sony Ericsson, Lava, HTC, Blackberry, Sony VIAO notebookes, in short all leading brands you can think of. at the whole sale prices, actual customer service meant to be of service to the customer and customer only. Prices that actually beat your nearest wholesale market rates, no vendors involved, you deal direct with the portal, to provide you an online secured payment environment - wide range of payment options, same day shipping and guaranteed delivery on 3rd day. seems like a dream, a wish? well here is an answer to your wish: log on today to www.letsshop.in. Although letsshop.in is new, hardly 2 weeks old, but hey they managed to get 82,000 ranking on Alexa just within 2 weeks of launch, whereas, it takes ages for a website to reach top 1 million.

With due respect to all the other shopping portals above. I have no hard feelings for you, but you have long exploited the market, customers and vendors. I was selling on these portals and I still am on few of them. However, the idea of exploiting the customer and vendor didn't suit me much. I had this vision to empower every consumer so much that, they can actually get the products at less than market price. So here we launched this portal, with zero outside investment, no VC means we are not answerable to any one as in why we are not keeping much margins. Which means, we keep the profit without being greedy about it, and just keeping enough required to help us and this portal survive.