eBay brings global shopping to India

eBay India, the leading e-commerce marketplace and the wholly owned subsidiary of eBay Inc, on Thursday launched an online shopping extension to its site — Global EasyBuy — that will give Indian consumers online shopping access to 18 million international product items.

The platform will let consumers buy international brands across the categories of clothing, shoes, accessories, electronics and gadgets, health and beauty, music, books, sports and other products that are usually hard to find in India.

Kashyap Vadapalli, director- marketing, eBay India, said that consumers can pay in rupees through Indian debit or credit cards and that the products will be shipped within 15 days to customers’ doorsteps.

eBay did a soft launch of the Global EasyBuy in September 2009 and since then, Kashyap said, there have been enquiries on the service from 160 cities in the country.

eBay has tracked the early shopping pattern on Global EasyBuy trends, according to which consumers in cities such as Delhi and Chennai are buying more of cellphones, PDA phones whereas consumers from Mumbai are purchasing mostly fashion products.

The site has noticed consumers in Pune and Bangalore purchasing IT gadgets and computer peripherals respectively on the site.

Overall, Vadapalli said, the consumer trend has been towards purchasing products from categories of gadgets, books, music and lifestyle items. He said that there are 350-400 million middle class individuals in the country aspiring to spend towards lifestyle needs and discretionary items. The e-commerce company is targeting evolved internet users, aged between 20 and 50 years who have a higher spending-power to grow the Global EasyBuy service.

“In India, there are 50 million internet users, of which about 40 million log on to internet everyday and 35 million of them search for products online. We are essentially targeting these individuals,” Vadapalli said.

eBay India started operations in August 2004 with acquisition of home-grown auction site Bazee.com that was founded in 2000. The portal currently has 3 million active users in India with high number of repeat buyers, Vadapalli said.

According to Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) estimates, the online retailing industry is Rs 1,000 crore in size and growing at 30-25 per cent year-on-year. In the recent few years, many organised Indian players, such as Future Group through Future Bazaar and Shoppers Stop, have ventured into online retailing.

Industry experts suggest that online shopping is catching up in tier-2 and tier-3 locations in a big way where consumers are still not introduced to the big-box retail format.

Shoppers Stop and Future Bazaar both are seeing increased enquiries from these markets, too.

“Online retailing is getting more traction with more and more people shopping online. In the past 18-24 months, we have noticed a rise in the number of people shopping on eBay itself. In online retailing, the overhead costs such as rentals are cut off, besides inventory acquisition happens much quicker,” Vadapalli said.

Online shopping as a trend is catching up because consumers are offered millions of options online compared to a few hundred or thousand in a retail store.