IRCTC & NDTV eCommerce

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

With an Alexa rank of approx 12000 in India, majority of its traffic generation is from Facebook (all from 3k fans only) with nearly 90% of the keyword traffic from the variants of 'Indian Roots'

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 :)

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PayZippy by Flipkart

Many of you might not be aware of PayZippy - a payment gateway which is being built by Flipkart; the eCommerce giant of India.

What PayZippy offers to Merchants:

• Higher conversions with less abandonments
• User experience
• Great merchant support - available for 12 hrs on all 7 days
• Payment gateway for mobile as well
• 100% secure
• Better pricing - no sign up fee, no annual maintenance

In India most of the players revolve/aspire around CCavenue, EBS, Paypal, DirectPay. The most important factor while choosing a payment gateway is Security(for merchants and customers both), followed by the Pricing (Debit card, Credit Card, EMI)

Flipkart is definitely a trusted name when it comes to selling online, but would they be equally successful with PayZippy? Well this would completely depend on the robustness of the tool and how useful it turns out to be.

Another question which comes to mind is - would the aspiring start-ups in eCommerce space want to use Flipkart Payment Gateway. Though we do not know the answer, however we can speculate. If people would have flocked knowing its Flipkart then the name might have been shouting Flipkart name all over.

• The "Merchant" section does not mention Flipkart owns it
• The "Customer" section does mention this - and it sounds as if Flipkart is trying to tap their customer base. But here the VOC won't help the new founders in choosing a payment gateway. Is this desperation or the only way Flipkart could attract people ?
• PayZippy's facebook page is the only place which mentions "PayZippy by Flipkart". Twitter also has a mention but not that prominent
• Most important - the site www.payzippy.com does not have a 'Privacy Policy' and a 'Terms & Conditions' page. What does that signify ? Why did Flipkart choose to ignore this ?
• PayZippy at this point of time does not support OpenCart, Magento, Wordpress - which is nearly 70-80% of the market share.
• Given an understanding, its clear that PayZippy is a B2B model, still PayZippy is more active on Facebook and not at all present on LinkedIn - am wondering why.

PayZippy is not the 1st business model which Flipkart has ventured into, apart from online store. Flipkart owns a brand named DigiFlip. Surprisingly, there is no brand website for DigiFlip

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