Ebay India is in the news for apparently looking to launch its services on mobiles in India. eBay India director (marketing and operations) Kashyap Vadapalli spoke to WATBlog on their mobile plans, the recent ebay census and Ecommerce opportunity in India.
What can expect from ebay India on mobile and when?
There are a whole lot of people who are mobile phone users and the mobile numbers are increasing in sophistication as well. We currently have a dial in 1800 number which we started last year for users to dial in and transact on eBay India. We want to explore mediums through which users can reach us easily and thus the mobile phone is a medium we are considering. Currently we are at the evaluation stage of this opportunity and once we analyse the business opportunity and then we shall work on the infrastructure behind.
Can we expect a mobile centric launch in 2010?
Too early say but 2010 is the year for us to evaluate and act on this opportunity.
What about initiatives like movie ticketing?
We have those services in the global markets are not going to be launched in India anytime soon.
Trends in 12-24 months?
We have launched this study called the Ebay census in which we look back at 12 months of completed data on ebay and our interest in it is to understand consumer demand and consumer interest. When we look at it from a pincode level which gives us bifurcation between metros and small towns, north and south and sometimes also consumer level data like male and female. This data is representative of EBay and Ebay being a leader its also indicative for e-commerce in general.
The data shows that close to 2500 locations is from where we get buyers and sellers from. This data also shows that today ecommerce is widespread across the country. Trend no.2 is the emergence of rural. We found that 747 rural locations have participated of which 181 locations people have sold stuff.
No.3 trend is global trade – Ebay India is part of the global network and people who are interested in selling to countries out of India. This is a trend we are seeing increasing each day.
How big is ecommerce in India? How fast will it grow?
Market size is 9500 crores e-commerce which is e-tailing is 1200 crores and overall market is growing at about 30%. Number of people who seem to have transacted online is supposed to be 8-10 million range but the number of people who have shopped for products online is 2-4 million level.
