A blog on eCommerce, Social Commerce, Comparative Shopping Engines & Business

By Hendrik Laubscher

Search Results for: "Amazon"

Managing the Narrative

I have written about the laws of unintended consequences, perception and bias, and the narrative previously. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, “narrative”:

  • a story or a description of a series of events.
  • a particular way of explaining or understanding events.

A story has three sides – your version, my version, and the narrated version. As I sift through 300 stories a week to produce this newsletter, it is clear that stories are managed or not. We live in an era where stories can travel continents in minutes via social media; some journalists do proper work, and some don’t. When a multi-national or brand tell me the media has a story wrong or is drawing incorrect conclusions from it, my mind starts processing the news. I want to have a look at the Zoox acquisition, which Amazon announced and look at what is happening at Lazada.

In the past newspapers and TV was the primary sources of information. Today there are many news platforms, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, WeChat, Facebook, and Instagram. Podcasts also communicate value to listeners. Some companies control the narrative while others don’t.

Source: The Indian Telegraph

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The future of ecommerce, Flipkart to be Largely an M-Commerce Company and Tiger Global snaps up Alibaba shares – eCommerce stories of the week

The future of ecommerce, Flipkart to be Largely an M-Commerce Company, Tiger Global snaps up Alibaba shares at a giant valuation, Argentina and Russia restricts ecommerce and much more.

The past week has contained stories that has me shaking my head in disbelief (Argentina and Russia restricting ecommerce) and thinking about the future of ecommerce. What is the future of ecommerce? The short answer is I am not sure. I see a combination of mobile commerce with personalization, location based services that includes social commerce in some way or form all together. Social commerce has been on my mind for the last few weeks as I think Asia is showing everyone that messaging is also part of the future. I will continue the thoughts in a longer post on social commerce soon..

I am going to be a bit controversial in a minute as I think ecommerce in Argentina and Russia got given the short end this past week. Long story short in both cases have legislation ensured that importing of international goods from international merchants (eBay, Amazon and Alibaba) become a long and difficult process. I believe that in both countries are the incumbents (MercadoLibre and Ozon) benefiting from this sudden change but in both counts the biggest losers are the locals buying from these international juggernauts. I have a fundamental problem when corporates use legislation to slow down the progress of companies that innovate and do better customer service than local companies. This development surely will hurt Russia’s position as an emerging market that ecommerce investors are looking at.

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Rakuten buys eBates, eBay to unveil mobile advertising in apps – eCommerce news of the week

We are a week or 10 days away from the Alibaba IPO.  Alibaba’s IPO is currently driving the ecommerce industry as companies ensure that they are best prepared after Alibaba raises billions. One company clearly working hard to combat Alibaba’s potential impact is Rakuten. Rakuten has been acquiring US based businesses which they will add to their Asian based business. Interestingly – I wonder why has Rakuten not thought about acquiring businesses in Asia? Their last 2 purchases has been US based companies that for all intensive purposes will become bolt-ons. The eBates acquisition is in my opinion a clever acquisition – one it can be added to Rakuten’s global business but also provide intelligence towards where shoppers get most cash back post purchase. Is Rakuten looking to buy more ecommerce companies?

Something is happening at eBay and it is not good. Firstly – Apple conveniently does not mention PayPal as part of their Apple Pay product. For the record I think Apple Pay being US only is indicative of Apple trying to get all elements (partnerships, legislation etc) done prior to rolling it out globally. PayPal has a problem; Amazon, Google and now Apple are looking to add more value to their payments businesses while keeping PayPal outside their ecosystems.

I don’t agree with the news that eBay will be adding a mobile advertising network in Q4. It reeks of desperation as advertising inside mobile apps lead to confused users, a drop in click through rates that adversely affects mobile conversion rates (which are low in any case). I don’t see Alibaba, Amazon or any other mobile apps ecommerce business as adding advertising soon.. Also this story, every quarter that Google is to invest in eBay is either eBay looking for help from Google or an analyst that wants to increase the eBay share price for a few hours. I don’t see Google investing in eBay as that will in the long run create huge trust issues for Google inside the commerce industry.

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The 10 ecommerce stories for the week of 9 August 2013

Assessing Zimbabwe’s readiness for eCommerce, Google launches a vehicle insurance comparison service, The battle in China between Tencent and Alibaba is on and much more.

It is Wednesday and if I look back in the last week on my twitterfeed, RSS reader (yes – it is not dead) and by all the email I read then I can categorically say we are in for a very interesting 12 months ahead. In China, the 2 super powers are beginning to battle one another. Alibaba in my mind is a company that scares me (I have a long post coming on the East’s ecommerce powerhouse) it has scale, has 2 dominant platforms (Taobao and TMall) and increasingly is showing their intentions. Their biggest direct competitor Tencent is the social powerhouse that has most of China on their networks. They have a trojan horse called WeChat I think is going to be a big deal. Tencent wants to play in ecommerce but Alibaba is ensuring that their walled garden is protected. Alibaba blocking WeChat is a big deal and I think is a sign that we are going to see these businesses spend millions of dollars to disrupt one another.

In the US – last week was literally the Jeff Bezos show. There was so much news that I wrote a separate post on it. Did anyone notice the timing of this PR fest? Suddenly all the negativity in Germany regarding labour relations is no longer front of mind. I personally think that Bezos is leveraging something that he can control. He speaks seldomly to the press and does a good job of repeating the trusted customer focus gospel. AmazonFresh is Bezos going after retail and creating a defensible against any competitor (Walmart, Google and the rest). Amazon and Alibaba are the same in my mind – they have the potential to shut businesses down.

In South Africa, there is a battle looming between the banking sector and ecommerce businesses. The biggest loser is the ecommerce industry. I am all for secure payments but surely the process should not have a negative effect on transactions and the ability to complete them. This is one of the reasons I think mobile has another potential impact on ecommerce – being able to act as a digital pass to allow transactions.

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The 10 ecommerce stories for the week of 30 June 2013

Trouble at The Iconic, Square enters the marketplace space, Amazon wants be a digital art dealer and Fab raising money

Fab.com has been in my thoughts the last 2 weeks. Are they growing too fast? Do they play the PR game and what is their future? Those 3 questions have been circling in my thoughts and in all honesty I am more unsure about this business than before they raised the money.

14 million users, $310 million raised and many acquisitions. Those 3 things together does not make any investor jump for their checque books, in all honesty it raises question. I am a Jason Goldberg fan ( I read his blog and I get the daily fab emails) but I think we need to look at a few things in context.

One – they consistently mention becoming an Amazon of design. Amazon is business that is non repeatable and it is a behemoth. eCommerce is a margins game and fab with respect is going to battle becoming a $1 billion dollar business. Why? I don’t they can scale the business to make that kind of revenue globally. What makes Amazon scary is that it has a variety of methods to make revenue (AWS, Prime, Marketplace, Fulfillment by Amazon etc) what does Fab have that can be seen in a similar manner? At the moment nothing. Secondly, this created version of ecommerce – emotional ecommerce is really a Goldberg creation. No other industry analyst, CEO, VP has made mention of that. I get that they need to create themselves a niche but I think fab needs to take a few lessons from Amazon. Be transparent but really try to tone down the rhetoric and focus on achieving customer happiness and make a lot of revenue before telling everyone about it.

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The 10 e-commerce stories for the week ending 20 July 2012

The week that has passed contained previews of the future. Facebook and Walmart are to strengthen their relationship and Amazon will be starting to face user revolt over sales tax collection. Amazon will be doing the right thing with regards to taxing but how it affects their bottom-line is another story. It is pretty clear that Walmart feels the need to partner with digital companies to try and shorten the distance between themselves and Amazon.

There is one post that I read this week that I have gone back to a couple of times. Fred Wilson has been writing about mobile a lot more recently and his post over Mobile commerce highlighted one of the newer channels that commerce needs to be thinking about. Mobile is here to stay, the execution is what will determine who wins and become successful. It provides more touch points for retailers to connect with their users.

Obviously the biggest story of the week has to be Marissa Mayer being named the new CEO of Yahoo!. Personally, I want Yahoo! to become more relevant because dear citizens of the Internet we have one search engine making all the rules. Commerce is something severally lacking from Yahoo’s stable (Yahoo! Shopping is powered by PriceGrabber) and maybe something that Mayer needs to have a look at. Merchants are going to look for an alternative as soon as paid Google Shopping is rolled out. I sense acquisitions in a variety of areas.
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9 Thoughts about ecommerce from 2016

Every year at this time I write a summary of the ecommerce year that has gone by. I can summarise the 9 thoughts in one word – unexpected. Globally the year saw a lot of unexpected mergers and acquisitions, new developments and businesses selling for way below their valuations.

The 9 thoughts in no particular order:

  1. Walmart spending $3.3 billion Dollars to acquire Jet.com. Walmart gained a new demographic (millennials) and most importantly Marc Lore is now the President & CEO of Walmart eCommerce and Founder & CEO of Jet. It is increasingly clear that Walmart has an ecommerce problem. The growth rate is slowing and Amazon is growing at a steady rate. This is something that could be a story line in 2017 as battling Amazon in the US will be long term battle.
  2. Alibaba acquiring Lazada in South East Asia. The latter part of 2016 indicated tough market conditions for investment into ecommerce. Increasingly it looks like sovereign funds and Chinese internet businesses are buying ecommerce businesses at below valuation rates.  Lazada was running out of funding and Alibaba acquiring it for a Billion Dollars makes all the sense in the world. Lazada has become the dominant marketplace in South East Asia through logistics and providing sellers access to the growing part of Asian ecommerce.  Alibaba through Lazada has also acquired Redmart to provide customers in South East Asia with the opportunity to purchase groceries. I suspect that this is a pre-emptive measure on the expected arrival of Amazon.
  3. eBay selling a large part of their MercadoLibre shares. In direct contrast to the entire ecommerce industry eBay made selling a large chunk of their MercadoLibre at a time in which the large ecommerce businesses have added assets to their businesses.  eBay is fighting for its future – that is clear to me. The sale of the shares in MercadoLibre is primarily to provide them with capital for investment into other more important verticals.
  4. 2016 will be remembered as the year in which Amazon made their logistics desires known. It is clear that currently they are in an investment mode. They have via their Chinese subsidiary acquired a shipping license to ensure that they can operate as a freight forwarder. In the US they have rented airplanes to ensure that they can move products between distribution centres. Amazon is also slowly rolling out their Flex programme to ensure that they can provide on demand employment for those wishing to deliver items for them on an hourly rate. As Amazon is famous for re-purposing capital expenditure I believe that in  late 2017 will be providing logistics services to their top tier sellers. If I was a shareholder in UPS, Fedex or any logistics firm I would be concerned.
  5.  Alibaba had a nightmare of a year. Yes, their global shopping festival smashed records but their counterfeit problem and quarterly reporting became issues. Barron’s wrote a hard hitting post regarding concerns over Alibaba’s reporting which was quickly rebuked by Alibaba management. By end of 2016 Taobao was placed back of the US trade representative list for counterfeit sales. Most of the product marketplaces had their issues with this in 2016 but Alibaba’s got way more coverage as the scale of it is larger.
  6. The fashion ecommerce space witnessed one of the largest mergers when Net-a-Porter and Yoox joined to form a new Italian based behemoth. The merger was a story line for me since middle of 2015. The combined business has not shown the same level of innovation but I believe that this merger has still to come full circle. Between Carmen Busquets and Natalie Massenets unhappy departure and the departure of some of the top staff of Net-a-Porter I believe that the fashion ecommerce space is still very much open for serious innovation.
  7. Zalando, a giant in European fashion ecommerce has been making the right noises in the last 9 months. Better margins, better financial performance has seen them become a more vocal part of a vertical looking for a market leader. Zalando has made their intentions clear – they want to become the largest fashion based marketplace and provide brands a place to sell to customers in which they can get more of the transaction. By allowing brands to ship directly to customers they can get products to customers faster and so defend their turf from Amazon.
  8. 2016 will be remembered as the year in which Rocket Internet’s growth stagnated and finding investment for their larger businesses was extremely tough. None of their largest ecommerce businesses are close to profitable, some their investments are holding of going public and their share price is down.
  9. Naspers, Tiger Global, eBay and most venture capital investors used 2016 as a way to ensure that their investments become more capital efficient. Whether it be by way of closure, merging or selling assets the amount of ecommerce startups with high valuations became less as investors became more concerned by burn rates, Amazon and valuations that were way too high.

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The 10 ecommerce stories for the week ending 7 September 2012

A Samwer leaves the mother ship to lead a new battleground, BigCommerce & Rubybox raises funding, Amazon and eBay users in Argentina hit with additional taxes.

The week past in ecommerce can be summarized as being focused on the future. Let me say firstly that Amazon put everyone on notice last night with their range of new Kindles. eBay acquiring Svpply is an interesting one but not totally unexpected for me. I got wind on a move earlier in the week but eBay definitely is adding alot of value to their New York operation.

BigCommerce raising an additional $20 million leads me to think that there definitely is a place for ecommerce enablers. They currently service 30 000 small to medium sized businesses, I wonder how many of those are in developing markets?

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The 10 e-commerce stories for the week ending 18 January 2013

Jack Ma to retire, Hybris to IPO? and ecommerce in South Africa

The past week has been an interesting one. IPO’s seems to be a topic of note in 2013 and Alibaba is seemingly getting their house in order to go public in the next 18 months. Ma is retiring in May 2013 from being CEO of Alibaba and moving away from being in charge is a strategic move. Ma has been accused in the past of not disclosing information regarding holdings and if he is seen as being in charge of Alibaba when they do go public it will hurt their potential of investment. Even if Ma is not CEO or President of the company, he will likely become chairman of the company, so he will still be in control of the long term strategy. Alibaba is his offspring and he will ensure that it does well in the long term.

If Alibaba goes public, I think we will see an increasing amount of Alibaba businesses going into Asia and Australia. Asia is at the moment a straight battle between 2 giants (Alibaba and Rakuten) and upcoming ecommerce businesses which are either funded (Rocket Internet, MIH, eBay and Amazon) and unfunded (startups).

At the moment ecommerce platforms or software providers is a vertical that is tightly monetised and scrutinised by corporates. The corporate owners of ATG, GSI Commerce, Magento and Hybris are all looking to own a specific part of ecommerce landscape and make considerable returns on investment. ATG is owned by Oracle and has flown by the radar for a very long time and service businesses like Walmart. GSI Commerce and Magento is owned by eBay and it is slowly becoming clear what the value of the holdings are for eBay. Hybris is a company that intrigues me and has flown below the radar. Enterprise ecommerce solutions is going to become increasingly important as ecommerce becomes more mainstream in developing economies.

The stories that caught my attention for the past week:

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An ambitious Jet.com is a dangerous Jet.com

I have been thinking about Jet.com ever since returning from my 3 week US trip. Clearly they are a top of the hype list before any sale of merchandise has occurred. Marc Lore is an operator with a very successful past and someone that is clearly deeply in touch with ecommerce. Is jet.com a dot.com bust in the making or a potential game changer that will effect change in the ecommerce landscape?

Jet.com is an ambitious concept that is aiming at a part of the ecommerce landscape that has no clear market leader. It is not a marketplace – it is subscription based membership driven ecommerce business. The digital version of Sam’s Club / Costco that has a lot of technology under the hood to drive sales for merchants. It has been designed to disrupt these 2 large wholesale shopping clubs without the need for volume sales.

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The 10 ecommerce stories for the week of 16 August 2013

Jingdong to enter the US?, Alibaba invests into ShopRunner, Bad news for LivingSocial (was there any good news about LivingSocial?) and more

Ladies and Gentleman, may I be the first person to put it on record that the Superpowers (Tencent, Jingdong and Alibaba) of the East are beginning to move to other markets (Europe, US and others). Alibaba and Tencent are the businesses that in my mind will disrupt big Internet businesses. Alibaba have made a handful of investments into US ecommerce businesses which are all areas that they lacked in. Tencent, I think will disrupt mobile commerce in a very big way. However, the news that Jingdong (360buy.com) met with partners in the US made me shake my head in disbelief. It makes little or no sense – as the incumbents are invested into the market heavily and potentially could lead to a heavy spending spree by JD.com (not that that has been a problem).

Alibaba’s investment into ShopRunner is an interesting one as that seems to be a clear ploy to counter Amazon Prime. I am going to say this once – Alibaba is the only company that can battle Amazon head on. The rest will have to watch the market moves and ponder the future. Whether Alibaba wants to go directly against Amazon is another question?

LivingSocial with Groupon were the ecommerce darlings for the quick investors but both are looking at strategies to survive. Groupon is pivoting to being a local commerce businesses focused on payment, restaurant bookings etc. LivingSocial bought aggressively in 2011 and are looking in real bad shape. How long before the completely disappear is the real question. Ticket Monster, LivingSocials big acquisition is for sale..  Is it a case of model no longer being relevant? The Group buying business is in my mind, the digital version of impulse buying and that is not a sustainable behaviour to replicate online. Groupon is however making progress and in all might be the only survivor in the group buying space.

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The 10 e-commerce stories for the week ending 4 January 2013

Fab wants to become like IKEA, Rocket Internet helps the Brazil ecosystem, eBay offers more logistical opportunities for retailers and are considering investing into Snapdeal

The first calendar week of 2013 is in the record books. In South Africa, I reckon we will see more online shops re-opening and starting to process orders that was placed in the festive season. I wonder if in other markets this phenomenon also happens? Closure over the festive season is something I have become accustomed to.

My thoughts this past week was over the sudden emergence of potential retail for ecommerce businesses. Fab.com is seemingly keen on physical retail. I must say I am slightly surprised by this as I wonder how this would affect their bottom line? Well for starters I am assuming that they have data for their states in which the big sales occur. So, those I am expecting will be the first locations in which their retail operations would be opening. E-commerce is primarily done to ease the costs of retail locations and to create the ability for shoppers to buy any item they desire from their current location. Retail is they way in which commerce is done in a large scale across the globe. Maybe, my Amazon tinted glasses is ensuring that I don’t see the potential of physical retail for ecommerce merchants. I believe ecommerce businesses should stay away from bricks and mortars as long as they possibly can.

The other story which dominated this past week has been Google getting nothing more than a slap on the wrist from the FTC. I find the resolution in the US to be disappointing. I really would like to have seen that the FTC ensuring that Google is kept in check to ensure an Internet that provides potential for all businesses and not a select few.

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2021 Stories I am following

History will show us that 2020 was a year in which consumer behavior, commerce, and trade changed. Businesses of all sizes faced challenges at a scale not seen prior the World War 2. What does 2021 have in store?

If 2020 is a yardstick, 2021 will continue to speed up e-commerce adoption worldwide. If you run a business or manage a brand, the next six months in develop markets or 18 months in developing markets are critical.

2021, a new year that rhymes with 2020
Source: Medium
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Best Buy Launches Its Own Marketplace

The Marketplace concept is one that both intrigues me but it also scares the living daylights out of me. Call it an oxymoron but its greatest strength could be it biggest challenge. Let me explain.

So yesterday when Best Buy announced that is adding a marketplace to its offering..  The first problem that this creates for me is that this is not a unique offering. There are many other online retailers that does it and while it provides additional content to your offering for the long tail it may cause harm.

Best Buy is following Amazon.com, eBay, Mastercard, Sears, Walmart and others in opening an online marketplace that gives consumers access to products from other merchants in addition to its own. According to a Financial Times report, Best Buy is responding to the development of its unintended role as “Amazon’s showroom”, the situation where consumers visit the chain’s stores with smartphones to comparison shop and eventually make their purchases online. CEO Brian Dunn, in a statement, called the Best Buy Marketplace “a key development to our multi-channel platform … that enables consumers to shop how they want and encourages additional reasons to visit and purchase at BestBuy.com.” ANT Online, BeachAudio.com, Buy.com, Mambate, SF Planet and Wayfair are third-party sellers that are participating in the launch of the Best Buy Marketplace.

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The 10 e-commerce stories for the week ending 8 March 2013

Cobone acquired by Tiger Global Management, Google selling cars?, Hybris raises money and much more

I missed writing last week’s summary and boy this week has been full of news. Google is rumored to be building a Amazon Prime competitor. I find this interesting, how does it fit into the commerce value chain at Google? (at the moment this seems like a program to be run on top of Google Shopping? ). Secondly, it raises a very interesting question – if I am a merchant why would I take part in this program? Amazon Prime is the world’s greatest loyalty program and it is very successful for Amazon’s customers. The mere fact that Bezos keeps the user numbers secret tells you of the importance. Google has a serious disconnect with “Google Shopping Express” and needs to ensure that it compliments its services or it will go nowhere.

Are we beginning to see the building blocks for a marketplace from Google? Maybe, but Google has bigger problems to worry over – vertical search as seen with apps is cannibalizing its advertising business(the goose that lays the golden eggs for Larry and co), Android has lost ground in comparison to iOS for the last 2 months and Motorola seems to be having less staff every month.

I am going to say it as it has been on my mind for the last few weeks – anybody that wants to directly compete with Amazon needs lots of cash, patience and has to be 4 steps ahead of Bezos. No one has won when going head to head with Amazon.com (only when using the courts have Amazon lost) – they are the kings of margins and closing down industries. Google must be real sure that they want to go head to head with Amazon. I have seen what they do to companies – it aint pretty.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a potential IPO for Hybris software. Well, in the last few days they have announced a new round of funding by some serious investors. Meritech’s additional investing is interesting as they are a late stage fund and I think it signals that this investment is primarily done for growth. Let us be honest for a moment, enterprise commerce solutions is at the moment an open market. Oracle has spent billions on acquisitions, eBay has a interest via GSI Commerce and IBM has also spent millions on acquisitions to ensure that they have a total solution for merchants. Hybris is in my opinion a company to watch and I have a feeling that they will target specific functionality to add to their current offering. The IPO will come as they will need to raise money to challenge Oracle ATG in the enterprise commerce platform industry.

Africa and the Middle East are regions that I look at closely. Ecommerce in both regions are it is infancy but the investors are all here spending millions to ensure that they have a business/es to cater for customers in both regions. The Middle East has seen an influx of investment (LivingSocial etc) and then saw those same investors move out of the markets. It is almost like the ecosystem lost momentum which ensured business closures, investors leaving etc. Cobone is a early market leader who received funding from LivingSocial (whom are also under some pressure) and then lost the investor due to LivingSocial leaving the region. Earlier today, it was announced that Tiger Global has acquired Cobone with original investor Jabbar Internet Group exiting the investment. I note that  Tiger Global Management is investing heavily in Africa and MENA – it almost looks like a consolidation of holdings has been happening over the last 6 months.

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The 10 e-commerce stories for the week ending 27 July 2012

The past week was one dominated by earnings. Amazon disappointed but showed signs of where their growth is coming from. One thing that seems to have gone missing this week in all the Amazon doom and gloom is that they have a long term strategy. So they had a bad quarter.. yes, there are others who would not mind being in their position.

I believe that we are also beginning to see the power of the marketplace for a variety of verticals. Amazon is the standard and the results back it up, startups are trying to assist users either sell no longer needed items or help them them acquire items. The point is this vertical is growing in importance.
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Indian eCommerce is developing

India is at the moment one of the most written about ecommerce markets. The size of the country is contributing to the rapid development and investment into Indian ecommerce. Amazon is supposedly considering the market in 2012, so the local businesses are trying to get set before big A arrives.

As it is a developing internet market it poses challenges to international companies who are considering entering the market. I believe everyone who is interesting in the market are either considering acquisitions to enter the market or are investing heavily to ensure that their offers will draw Indian internet users.

Investment firms have pumped $140 million into e-commerce startups over the past six months, compared with just $48 million in 2010 — while the valuations of some startups soared four to six times, according to a recent article in Forbes India.

The big thing is that companies who did not get involved in China for example are looking at India as a market to enter. The concern is that they don’t want the short end of the deal again.

Entering a developing economy is not anything like the challenges facing investors going in a mature developed market. You will face bigger challenges which will be solved with creative thinking as seen with Flipkart.

Founded in 2007 by Sachin and Binny Bansal, two Indians formerly employed at Amazon, Flipkart has succeeded by adjusting the e-commerce model to fit local conditions. With credit-card penetration low, and the postal service and couriers notorious for lost and delayed shipments, the company pioneered a cash-on-delivery payment system and an in-house courier system that covers almost one-fourth of the country. Now selling music, movies, games and software, mobile phones and electronics, as well as books, the company reportedly does $6 million in sales per month.

Flipkart is the darling of the Indian market at the moment.. but many other competitors will arrive as other companies want part of the action.

Update: After writing this post and thinking carefully about the fact that ecommerce is a global industry I failed to add that Amazon is definitely a factor in India. After  seeing an article from comScore I think that one needs to always keep in mind that the big eCommerce players will impact your market. It would be ignorant to not have Amazon, eBay etc in mind.

The 10 ecommerce stories for the week ending 31 August 2012

Walmart has a Polaris moment, 360Buy blocks eTao, JadoPado sees big potential in the Middle East and more

It is the last day of August 2012 and this past week has been nothing short of a ecommerce hotpot. So many stories, story lines and ideas that makes my head spin (it feels like I don’t have enough time to write this).

This week has a significant milestone in it, Walmart telling the world about their new semantic search engine (Polaris) which I think is a big deal. It is clear that Walmart feels threatened by Amazon in terms of ecommerce, they have bought startups to ramp up their own offering. I said it a few weeks ago, the loss of the Kosmix founders was way bigger than what the press articles mentioned. Remember that they both created Junglee in the 90’s and then sold it to Amazon. The Junglee name has returned in India for Amazon, but what I find interesting to watch is the  amount of ex-Amazon talent taking jobs all across the globe in ecommerce. I speak from a bit of experience, they are like gold. Seattle water must be different or something but heck, their thought patterns on ecommerce is very different but always backed by reason and fact. I am a believer in experience, you cant buy it which leads to clearer goals and better decisions. That for me is Walmarts big disadvantage, they have all in the knowledge in retail but their ecommerce talent roster is bare.. prove me wrong Walmart and I will retract that sentence.

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The 10 e-commerce stories for the week ending 22 June 2012

The past week my mind has been focused on curation based commerce (Fab.com, onekingslane.com) and the emerging rocket ship called Pinterest. I love Fab and their emails and think that curation based commerce is a vertical that will expand. (The only problem is that they need to scale internationally, cough South Africa.) Let me be frank for a minute, after looking at Pinterest for close to a month, and writing a post on the company; I am still not sure whether Pinterest has a use case. Pinterest – A bubble waiting to burst opens this weeks’ look back with regards to ecommerce news.

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