E-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon clock bumper sale on Day One

International News
Dispelling the fear that a slowing economy may affect consumer behaviour, e-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon India have said they witnessed record transactions on their platforms on the first day of their annual festive sale, which started early on Sunday.
While home-grown Flipkart, which is now owned by American retail major Walmart, said it registered two times more sales on Day One of its flagship sale event Big Billion Days (BBD) over last year, rival Amazon claimed it witnessed the biggest opening day sale ever with a huge surge in participation in smaller towns.
According to Amit Agarwal, senior vice-president and country head, Amazon India, the company also saw the single-largest day of Prime sign-ups, with 66 per cent of Prime members shopping in 24 hours coming from tier II and tier III towns. The company added that 91 per cent of new customers were from smaller cities.
“Whether it is the Diwali festival season or any other shopping event, the primary objective for us is to add as many new customers as we can and convert the existing customer into Prime members. We are relevant to customers, no matter the macroeconomic conditions,” said Agarwal.

 According to Flipkart, it saw huge demand in almost all major categories, including beauty, women’s ethnic wear, kidswear, sports, fast-moving consumer goods, baby care, private labels, and furniture on the first day of the sale. The company saw 3x more transactions happening on its platform during early access (from Flipkart Plus customers), compared to last year. The number of transacting customers in tier II and smaller cities doubled over the same period. “We started this festive season by setting audacious targets. By all indication, this is going to be the biggest festive season that India has witnessed,” said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, chief executive officer of Flipkart....READ MORE

How to revive India's economy? Encourage ecommerce, says Amazon executive

Current Affairs
India needs to encourage ecommerce and reduce red tape to help small businesses sell online and export goods to help revive sagging domestic economic growth, a senior Amazon.com executive said on Wednesday.
"There is so much opportunity to just let ecommerce thrive versus trying to define every single guard rail under which it should operate," Amazon's India head Amit Agarwal told Reuters, ahead of the launch of Amazon's biggest campus in the world in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, on Wednesday.
India revised its ecommerce rules in early 2019, creating hurdles for Amazon and rival Walmart Inc's ecommerce subsidiary, Flipkart."I feel ecommerce can actually accelerate India's economy in a big way, if it's just allowed to thrive," said Agarwal, whose comments come at a time when India's economic growth has slumped to near five-year lows.
Agarwal said Amazon works with some 500,000 sellers, and has created over 200,000 jobs in India since launching its ecommerce operations in 2013.
He said Amazon's push to get small and medium businesses in India to export has resulted in more than $1 billion in exports and it expects this to exceed $5 billion in the next three years, but red tape is holding some businesses back."Even a seller, who wants to sell out of their state, has to get a tax registration in the new state. How many small business owners would go through the onerous job of doing that?" he said.

"The number of basic paper cut opportunities out there are so many," he said. "I feel we're getting lost in the high level debate around ecommerce and data localization."India's revised ecommerce regulations, along with its push to compel multinationals to store data locally, have irked the U.S...Read More

Shift to digitisation and e-commerce will fuel growth: Mjunction CEO

Company News

Mjunction, a 50:50 joint venture between SAIL and Tata Steel, has moved beyond its traditional strengths in commodities trade to embark on new businesses like real estate and sports solutions. It is also keen to partner Railways and its subsidiary companies to offer a platform for selling their scrap and idle assets. In this interview with Jayajit Dash, mjunction services limited's MD & CEO Vinaya Varma tells that the company eyes 40 per cent CAGR topline growth through 2023, betting on India’s e-commerce boom.

mjunction services has recently forayed into real estate vertical, auctioning commercial plots. Beyond UP, which other states are on your radar? Are you also looking at tie-ups with real estate developers?
mjunction entered the real estate sector with Uttar Pradesh Awas Vikas Parishad and currently, we are customising the platform for Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Authority (UPSIDA) where e-auctions will begin soon. After we consolidate our position in Uttar Pradesh, we will target other states.

How does mjunction intend to expand its sports solutions vertical? Beyond cricket, how do you aim to engage other popular sports?

There is a large opportunity for sports federations to bring in transparency and efficiency in several areas. We have a tie up with Sporty Solutionz to create digital solutions for cricket as well as other sports.

In the Railways sector, what bigger deals are you looking to seal? Any partnership on the cards with subsidiaries and Rail centric companies like Rites, IRCTC, IRFC or RailTel?

 mjunction has worked very closely with Railways and RITES for successful completion of projects like jungle clearance, inventorying, valuation and e-auction.

After Moglix, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy bets big on UrbanClap

Company News

Flipkart Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kalyan Krishnamurthy has put Rs 1.6 crore in UrbanClap, the Gurugram-based home services start-up, company filings sourced from business intelligence platform paper.vc showed.

Krishnamurthy, a former Tiger Global top executive, will also act as an advisor to UrbanClap, a source with direct knowledge of the development said.

In March, Krishnamurthy had invested in B2B e-commerce firm Moglix in a similar fashion. It is not immediately clear whether the investments are a precursor to potential business partnerships between Flipkart and either of Krishnamurthy’s investee companies, but the new deal lays bare his strategy to back companies with a proven e-commerce track records.

UrbanClap declined to comments for the story while Krishnamurthy could not be immediately reached for his comments.

Company filings dated April 5 showed, Krishnamurthy was allotted 310 equity shares in Urbanclap Technologies India for Rs 51,551 apiece. The investment is part of the firm’s $50 million series D round that closed in November, according to the source cited above. The said round was led by Steadview Capital and Vy Capital.

“We believe that UrbanClap is likely to raise a massively large round at a premium equal to or higher than the 51K that Kalyan paid," said Vivek Durai, founder of paper.vc. “UrbanClap is in a small tier of venture-backed start-ups that have displayed conventionally great financial performance.

 FY18 numbers show a 14% reduction in losses and a 225% increase in revenue. There is no reason to believe that graph will not continue into 2019.”...Read More