Namaste India
Flipkart was in the news recently because it raised $1 billion in funding to fund its expansion plans and to fight the competition. A couple of days after that, Amazon announced that it was investing $2 billion in its India operations. Why all the interest in the e-commerce market in India? Mostly because India’s smartphone ownership (and hence, Internet access) is rising. All that translates into a huge opportunity. When we visited Goa, I remember our hostess telling me that people even in remote places can now get things whenever it is available, thanks to Flipkart. No wonder that Flipkart said its sales had just hit $1 billion since it was launched. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, said something similar: “At current scale and growth rates, India is on track to be our fastest country ever to a billion dollars in gross sales.” Online spending in India is expected to hit $8.5 billion by 2016. So how many smartphones are being sold in India? This year, a whopping 225 million sm...