Indian E-commerce & Retail Story
October 25th, 2008
This is a guest post by Sachin Singhal – Business Manager CafeGadgets.in
Whenever someone reads the word “Retail” the only thing that comes to mind is huge investment required for starting a new chapter in this space. When you have big fishes like Tata’s & Ambani’s in the ocean how a small fish can earn its bread? Probably this is a valid question to ask. Does E-commerce and retail have any connection?
People who have vision are called visionaries. Let me share a story with you. 14 months ago a start up funded by some angel investor opened up an e-commerce superstore. Idea behind the store was to be a leader in Digital & lifestyle products space somewhat like www.newegg.com in US market. As Vertical online superstore was a new concept in Indian e-commerce space, they have own limitations due to various challenges hovering around this arena. Usually in India people starts with one category but due to pressure on margins they tend to diversify and include newer categories which can increase their bottom-line. Opening and running a vertical online superstore is just like walking on an edge of a cliff especially when the area of business is digital and lifestyle products. Gross margins in this category are only 5-6% and net of around 2-3%. But due to competition it can be further reduced to 1-2%. Somehow this start-up decided to walk on this difficult path.
Categories: Concept / Educative | Tags: cafegadgets, ecommerce, ecommerce india, guest post, sachin singhal | 3 Comments
