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India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

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Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#3
post #2

In my opinion Amazon helped Flipkart grow. If there wasn't any worthy opponent the growth would have been less aggressive. Now that the aggressive growth has plateaued, it makes sense to grow smarter.

Fact is, Amazon in India picked up in last 2years only while Flipkart already made its mark and doing billion dollar business.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#4
post #2

In my opinion Amazon helped Flipkart grow. If there wasn't any worthy opponent the growth would have been less aggressive. Now that the aggressive growth has plateaued, it makes sense to grow smarter.

Fact is, Amazon in India picked up in last 2years only while Flipkart already made its mark and doing billion dollar business.

What changed, in your opinion? Why now, for Amazon?

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#5
Here's what Flipkart is planning to do about it.

- Shrink marketplace model. - Increase inventory led sales. - Tighter quality control. - Work with large retailers & cut down on the seller base. - Bring back private labels. - Build financial services ecosystem.

A detailed account on how Flipkart is trying to mend its ways is here: http://goo.gl/zRZ1FP.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#6
Flipkart has had this coming. They grew too confident, even to the extent of making significantly anti customer moves. Whereas amazon make you feel like you are the center of the universe.

Another problem is that amazon's retail business is not a big earner, even after so many years. But all flipkart has is retail. They don't have the technical superiority to do something like aws.

Think about it. Flipkart offices are some of the best places to work. They hire the smartest, pay a lot and there's a lot of autonomy at work. But u didn't make sense for maintaining a website. A small team of IT guys can do that. They are competing in retail, where other stuff like logistics and partnerships and marketing matter. Not the design of the website. What are all those software engineers doing? They're definitely not building an aws. They're just maintaining the website.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#7
Amazon has earned my trust in every serious interaction I've had with them (live in USA and have prime subscription). Package never arrived? Reimbursed. Next day shipping and it took 2 days? Reimbursed. "New" book from reseller is clearly marked up with underlines and notes? Free book, no need to ship it back.

The trust I have with this company is the reason why I order from them so consistently, even if they are more expensive. People in India are surely learning the same thing.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#8
Surely this is nothing that Flipkart cannot fixed without some lobbying?

I am not trying to be facetious, India is very protectionist. Amazon can only operate as a marketplace, not a seller, yet they have one seller accounting for as much as 50% of sales ... a little suspicious.

The Indian govt. has introduced regulations, no doubt from Flipkart lobbying, to remedy the situation [0].

Amazon must be dumping money into Indian operations in order to kill competitors and hope once they have a monopoly, they can raise prices and lobby the government themselves.

[0] http://fortune.com/2016/04/08/amazon-regulatory-hurdles-indi...

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#10
post #7

Amazon has earned my trust in every serious interaction I've had with them (live in USA and have prime subscription). Package never arrived? Reimbursed. Next day shipping and it took 2 days? Reimbursed. "New" book from reseller is clearly marked up with underlines and notes? Free book, no need to ship it back. The trust I have with this company is the reason why I order from them so consistently, even if they are mor…

Completely agree -- BUT -- that's why they need to take the counterfeit items problem that is invading their site very seriously. They've bought a lot of good will with putting the customer first. But humans are easy to forget the good when bad things happen to them. Amazon could easily lose its hard won good will from the fake goods problem it has on its hands now.
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