E-commerce in India
2 Interesting statistics
From Ecommerce in India there are about 8,000 – 10,000 ecommerce websites in India . These seem to be websites with a payment gateway.
and Building a virtual mall – 22 to 23 per cent of products get returned.
The return rates / % of non complete transactions in ecommerce seem to be fairly high compared to other industries.
Though many ecommerce sites offers a variety of electronic products, there is no guarantee that they will be delivered after you make the payment online. Customs clearance can also be a problem. Bigger companies hire the services of a clearing agent but it is not feasible / economical for an individual or a small business to do so for low volume imports.
Many niche electronic products are not available in the Indian market or may be available with just 1 or 2 companies (from personal experience, you can spend weeks trying to locate a supplier and get a quote from them). GlobalEasybuy is a convenient way of purchasing these products from USA, while paying in Indian Rupees and a guarantee that the product will be delivered or payment refunded in case of non-delivery.
Though there is markup on the listed eBay.com price due to the customs duty and shipping charges, the imported product prices are often lower than those of the products available locally.
After using a coupon, a Vupoint Portable Hand Scanner ordered using Global Easy Buy was more than Rs 1000 cheaper than the similar model available online from Indian suppliers.
The order was placed on 18th August 2010, and the Hand Scanner was delivered to the buyer on 26th August 2010, within 8 days, which is comparable to what most Indian sellers offer.
Before ordering it is important to check the specifications (for supply voltage levels) and also warranty offered.
Most webhosting companies use WHMCS / Clientexec for managing customer signups, and the customer has to first specify the domain name before he can register. However, if you use some other platform for selling hosting, false customers can make payments and then refuse to specify the domain name to be associated with the account.
If they do this, you are forced to refund the amount. A similar problem is faced if you sell online advertising directly, some customers may make a payment and then refuse to send details of their advertisement despite repeated reminders. So you are forced to refund the payment they made.
Some of the reasons at least some online book stores should succeed in India are:
Chilliguard is one of the few pepper sprays which can be purchased online in India for self defense. Their website has a single product listed and payment is processed by CCavenue. After making the payment by credit card , an email notification is received. VPP payment option is also available.
Price : Rs 150 + 20 (shipping charges)
The item was shipped after 4 days through Speed post and received within a week. Contact the seller to confirm the delivery date. Net weight of the pepper spray is 25g.
As an experiment , I decided to sell advertising on my websites at eBay.in . The advertising for 2 websites was listed in auction format and the starting bid was small , Rs 5 for a banner advertisement on the home page for a period of 1 month for low traffic websites – less than 5000 visitors a month and Rs 10 for a website with 25000+ visitors a month.
For the 2 Rs 5 auctions, there was 1 bidder each. For 1 auction, the bidder has not paid up the Rs 5 due even after 4 days are over. For the other website, the bidder has paid after 4 days, but has not provided the details of the advertisement to be uploaded after sending 1 reminder.
(Will send repeat reminders to see if the buyer is interested in advertising)