Walmart Is Planning To Launch An E-commerce Marketplace In India

The biggies are coming! After Amazon entered India over the last two years by launching Junglee and Amazon.in, the e-commerce competition is likely to heat up if other international players also decide to look at entering the country. According to a report, Walmart is also planning to setup an e-commerce marketplace in the country.

The Indian e-commerce industry has become much more conducive to growth and is already projected to reach a valuation of $22 billion over the next 5 years. This would be the right time for international companies to enter the country. Walmart, it seems, has already hired personnel to go ahead and plan the marketplace operations. Walmart has already had a partnership with Bharti Enterprises but it seems that it didn’t work out as planned. Currently, there are strict FDI norms in place which make it difficult for foreign companies to set up e-commerce or direct retail operations. The only way around it, as Amazon seems to have figured out, is to build an e-commerce marketplace to begin with.

The FDI policy is under review and the Indian Government has shown signs that it might finally consider less stricter FDI norms so as to let these international firms enter Indian soil. However, this will add greater pressure to homegrown ecommerce companies like Flipkart, Snapdeal etc. who are already under pressure to reach profitability due to the investments that they have taken in to build the whole online retail infrastructure from scratch in the country. I believe that entry of foreign players will definitely raise the standards of Indian e-commerce but it will also prove to be very challenging for Indian enterprises to compete with them because of the sharp differences in capital between well established international companies and Indian startups who have yet to turn profitable.

What are your thoughts on this development? Share them with us in the comments.

Source | Economic Times

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