When I ordered my first book (the book I have been searching
for so long) online from flipkart in 2007/08, I thought wow what an awesome
idea. Instantaneously another thought came to my mind. Why is he not charging
me for delivery? Why am I getting a 35% flat discount? The answer seemed
obvious that he wanted me to be his loyal customer even if it means selling the
book at a loss. For last decade I have order more than 100 books online but the
discount still persists. So what went wrong with them let’s find out...
E-commerce/home shopping was considered the thing of
developed market because of higher per capita income, better literacy, better
internet coverage and busy life schedule. No one had ever imagined that a
middle class Indian will one day buy stuff online. The internet came really
late in India but the speed at which it has gripped the nation is phenomenal. Thanks
to our internet providers and their so called market capturing strategy India
has one of the cheapest internet usage rates in the world. From 250 rs/100 Mb
to 17Rs/GB the Indian data market have revolutionized a lot. Another contribution
in this is from cheap multimedia/smart phone sets Indian market has been
flooded with. Now every person irrespective of its age and stature is having a
smart phone in its pocket. I always thought the e-commerce company should share
their profits with Indian telecom and smart phone companies (Pun intended).
Coming back to the topic, the first major e-commerce website
that found liking in india was flipkart. They really cracked the code of Indian
market with their revolutionized idea “cash on delivery”. At that time it was a
major misconception that Indians are averse of using online payment gate way
for transactions. The truth was we didn’t know how to do it. The credit/debit
cards were not popular. ATMs were a rare commodity. Net banking was either not
available or not well publicized by the banks. No one taught us how to do the online
transactions and it seems a rocket science at that time. The “cash on delivery”
in a single step brought a radical change to the e-commerce industry. First, I
am perfectly happy to pay for something if it is in front of my eyes. Second, COD
is easier than credit/debit cards which are having high default rate.
cont...
