There are two points people miss in discussions around FLipkart:
1.) Flipkart in India is about access, not just convenience. Even with large bookstores like Landmark, Crossword, etc. all over the city, not every book s available all the time. Say I want to buy a Swiss army knife from a small city - Flipkart is where I go!
2.) The ₹500 minimum order requirement is a bit of a pain. But Flipkart usually still works out cheaper. Firstly, not many things apart from books would be available for less than 500. And books on Flipkart are massively discounted. I bought a book last week for ₹450, with a markup of ₹795. I gladly paid the shipping and got it next day morning!
Anybody who is complaining about Flipkart should really try it. One day free shipping halfway across the country is just crazy! No other e-com site does that. Amazon doesn't provide that fast shipping for free either! And most other e-com sites in the country are only about Fashion and Clothing, while Amazon India is just a better looking ebay.
Flipkart is awesome but you can't say that they are incomparable. Innovation in e-commerce in India is happening in logistics. And everyone is vying for shipping as fast as possible and delivering on Sundays too.
Flipkart was once the go to site for any online shopping. But I guess the Indian e-commerce ecosystem has come a long way from there. Today you have a dozen operators in this scene. Its actually nothing new in India, once you are successful a lot of try to replicate it albeit they do it better.
Either way, the biggest benefits that used to exist with Flipkart are gone. They no longer ship free for purchases less than 500 rupees, so spending an extra 50 when you can drive down to the nearest bookstore makes no sense. They have also become famous when it comes to cancelling orders the very next day you ordered, if the price of the goods you ordered went up.
In fact I guess Flipkart is now large transforming itself into an ebay kind of site, I guess that's the way they will eventually go.
Which are the sites that you think do it better? I have used a bunch of other websites, but IMO from aesthetics to tracking Flipkart is way better. However, there are things I find cheaper on SnapDeal.
Free shipping for less than Rs 500 is an unreasonable expectation. It will cost more than 50 bucks (and a lot of time) to drive down given petrol prices. Finally, the nearest book store may not be stocking what you need.
Eventually, Flipkart will become an Amazon. They seem to be following the exact same path.
Free shipping for a low priced item isn't sustainable. It's there to get traction. That's what amazon.in is doing right now. There's nothing wrong with offering free shipping above a certain threshold (like Amazon.com has a $25 threshold).
I don't think the biggest benefit of Flipkart was free shipping. And they have grown far beyond books. Amongst the e-commerce players in India, they are in the "better" category.
Actually free shipping, and cash on delivery are two things that helped Indian e-commerce scene gain some customers.
And spending for shipping will be non starter in India, people here bargain for a rupee or two for 1kg of potatoes with the local vegetable push cart vendor who comes right in front of your home to sell things. And we are expecting them to pay up 50 rupees for just showing up.
And its not just vegetable push cart vendors. You have clothes salesmen, pickle vendors, biscuit vendors and what not. Who just just go from street to street trying to sell stuff. Our people are culturally trained to forget giving them a extra shipping fee, but rather bargain for a lower price.
You are trying undo centuries of free shipping, and cash on delivery culture here.
Books work fine for e-commerce, because books are what they are. You read reviews on the internet and buy them, it doesn't matter what's inside as knowing that by reading is the whole point of the book. Its like a movie.
A mobile phone, tablet, laptop, clothes, glasses etc are totally different. I will never buy anything such, unless I see them or at least get a real feel of it. The Indian customers are very sensitive to this, try to convince an average Indian family to simply buy a thing online, without even seeing it once. Most won't, and for a good reason.
> Actually free shipping, and cash on delivery are two things that helped Indian e-commerce scene gain some customers.
Exactly. they "helped". It's like you handout freebies when you launch a new product so that people can get a "taste" before they commit to buy the whole package. All these incentives are there to get people hooked on to buying online. There's nothing wrong with this approach.
You need to step out of that rock if you feel that Indians aren't buying online. Brick & Mortar mobile stores could be one of the earliest casualty of e-commerce.
Who is better? I have used SnapDeal, BuyThePrice ( now merged with tradus) and lots of others, and Flipkart is THE best. Their website is pretty good as well and search is great. Not saying that there aren't issues with Flipkart, like cancelling items if price goes up, but they are still way ahead of others. Flipkart is the Amazon of India.
Flipkart doesn't have Amazon's reputation for customer service... and shows no interest in improving it either.
I've been stung twice by inaccurate specs on their website before I decided to keep away permanently:
1. A phone which I kept.
2. An LCD which I returned.
... And they always err on the the side which makes the product look better.
They do not fix the descriptions of when complained about, and they delete reviews which point inaccuracies in the product description.
Flipkart definitely took the Indian market by storm. They offered Free Shipping for orders even less than INR 200, and that too with Cash on Delivery. That was rad. But, it was very much expected to go soon because a company can't sustain that way.
Personally, I feel that the Indian customers expect a lot of free stuff which is sort of ridiculous. I mean you have a number of book stores, showrooms selling clothes, computers and loads of other things just next to your house, yet you wait for an order which might arrive after a week. It makes sense if you want to buy a coffee maker because that will come with free shipping and a reduced price, but please don't expect the same for small items.
What interests me more is the fact that Flipkart is already close to Amazon's marketplace at the moment and I am sure that it will continue to grow in that direction. What if Amazon acquires Flipkart at some point of time?
>>Personally, I feel that the Indian customers expect a lot of free stuff which is sort of ridiculous.
The fact is that we are upto cultural problems here.
>>but please don't expect the same for small items.
Again, which part of India do you live? Have you seen how vegetable push cart vendors, street salesmen or hawkers are treated. These people not just deliver a very low price stuff for free, but go further and have to face bargains for as little as 1 - 2 rupees.
Flipkart is one of the main reasons online shopping has become prevalent in India, but after becoming a marketplace they have messed up a bit (experiences of some friends and http://www.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Flipkart-screwed-me-over-... for example). If they manage to get the trust back, they have a great future, if not they will soon be unable to differentiate themselves from the other sites that are so rapidly cropping up.
I wonder how they are going to tackle supply chain issues. I think if they can crack supply and distribution in a way that ensures that the mindset shifts from "I can just go down the street and pick it up directly" to "this is so damn convenient". With rising fuel costs, and with it, rising costs of living, I think a company like Flipkart has the ability to stabilize markets. Will be interesting to see where this heads, particularly with all the investors they have on-board.
The biggest difference between Flipkart of today and that of yesteryear is that Flipkart is now a marketplace. This is unwieldy. There are 5 different sellers for the same goods with different prices, different offers, and different shipping rates. Moreover, the free shipping offer can't be used when you are purchasing from multiple vendors.
The other sad news was the closure of their digital music store. Flipkart please take my money and give me back the music!
I find that Flipkart does a pretty good job of managing your expectations in terms of delivery, even though you're buying from a 3rd party supplier. They update you when the seller accepts the order, packs it, when it is collected from the seller and finally through the entire delivery process.
What Flipkart has done in so much less time is amazing. Their Logistics are much much better. My college is in a remote area of Chennai. SO there aren't much shops nearby. So the entire population of my college depends on flipkart for its daily needs. This has solved a very big problem for us. And I'm sure there are lot more colleges in India who are connected to the supermarkets via flipkart.
Am I the only guy rooting for Snapdeal? I mean yeah, currently
flipkart is better than snapdeal, but snapdeal has better pricing and variety in products,Snapdeal needs good engineering talent now,specially with their search and filtering of products.
$500M of total funding is mammoth . I wonder whats going on . Since guruji couldn't become Google of India(Google of India is Google). I can't see Flipkart to be Amazon of India
1.) Flipkart in India is about access, not just convenience. Even with large bookstores like Landmark, Crossword, etc. all over the city, not every book s available all the time. Say I want to buy a Swiss army knife from a small city - Flipkart is where I go!
2.) The ₹500 minimum order requirement is a bit of a pain. But Flipkart usually still works out cheaper. Firstly, not many things apart from books would be available for less than 500. And books on Flipkart are massively discounted. I bought a book last week for ₹450, with a markup of ₹795. I gladly paid the shipping and got it next day morning!
Anybody who is complaining about Flipkart should really try it. One day free shipping halfway across the country is just crazy! No other e-com site does that. Amazon doesn't provide that fast shipping for free either! And most other e-com sites in the country are only about Fashion and Clothing, while Amazon India is just a better looking ebay.