The battle for etailing supremacy in India
In February 2014,the global analytical company CRISIL came out with a report that stated that etailing companies in India earned revenues of around 139 billion rupees (USD 2.24 billion) in 2013. Pretty impressive figures, indeed. Then came the dampener – This amounts to just 0.5 % of the revenues of brick and mortar retail companies in India. So one may be tempted to ask – ‘Why the huge buzz about etailing?’.The answer lies in the huge growth rate of e-commerce firms – they showed a CAGR of 56% during the period of 2008-13 – as well as the operational issues that brick and mortar retailers experience such as high rentals and limited real estate options. With the internet users in India expected to cross 500 million by 2015 and the revenues of e-retailers set to triple by reaching USD 8.13 billion (CRISIL report) in the next three years, there is no option of ignoring the e-tail sector.…show more content… With no current plans to combine the fashion businesses of the two portals and with the announcement that Myntra would operate independently, the acquisition seemed to be a strategic move on the part of India’s largest e-retailer to counter the aggressive overtures of Amazon in to the Indian market. Acquisition of Myntra is set to capture an estimated 50 percent of the market by giving Flipkart a better foothold in the apparel sector and the figure is expected to rise in the coming years. Flipkart hit a gross merchandise value of USD 1 billion in March 2014 – the first for an Indian retailer over a period of 12 months –which was a year earlier than the company estimates and is expected to close the year with sales of USD 3