2 very old and successful players venture into eCommerce.
NDTV and IRCTC
Though IRCTC is into eCommerce for long (online ticket selling), finally they decided to give a competition to Flipkart, Jabing, Myntra, etc
Why am I comparing IRCTC with Flipkart and others?
- Flipkart is the most visited eCommerce site in India, with alexa rank at 11 with majority of the traffic coming from Books.
- IRCTC is already at an alexa rank of 61 - the sight with maximum visits from middle class population in Inda with one of the highest conversion rates in the country
- With a wide range of product, discount upto 85% and multiple banners on IRCTC homepage, it won't be tough to generate a lot of free traffic from IRCTC home page to their shopping portal.
- IRCTC also has a good spending capacity
- IRCTC need not take the route of a market place and its not foreign VC funded
However, IRCTC's site is not google and customer friendly. There are lot of loopholes in the site which if not rectified can pull back IRCTC
NDTV got into eCommerce with the name Indian Roots selling lifestyle products for now and might very soon get into electronics as well. With more than 30 brands catering to lifestyle products like Home Linen, Decor, Bags, Stoles and formal/ethnic apparel.
What's surprising is that the domain is nearly 10 yrs old. Did NDTV have had plans to use http://indianroots.com for eCommerce then ?
- The USP of Indian Roots is that it delivers worldwide
- The sad part is that the minimum order value for Free Shipping should be 5,000 INR / 100 USD / 75 GBP
All this achieved in last in last 6 months - its very clearly that NDTV is moving very slow
What's in for the general public ?
- With big players like NDTV and IRCTC getting into online shopping, they are definitely going to give a tough competition to Flipkart, Jabong, Myntra etc
- The cost of products would definitely drop - online and offline both
- With the number of mobile internet users at a regular steep rise and with the new algorithm change from google, people are going to take advantage of this fight and technology with a good bargaining at offline stores.
All I say is - Happy Shopping :)
