Flipkart is all geared to shutdown eBay.in and launch its own website to sell refurbished goods in India. The announcement came from Flipkart’s CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy in an email to his employees, where he wrote about Flipkart’s decision to end the strategic relation with eBay in India. The new platform is expected to function just like OLX and Quikr, which are currently dominating the secondhand goods market in India.
According to the email Krishnamurthy wrote, Flipkart will bring in a different value proposition to the refurbished goods market in India. The email states, “Based on our learnings at eBay.in, we have built a brand-new value platform launching with refurbished goods — a large market which is predominantly unorganised. With Flipkart’s customer base and F1 Info Solutions & Services in our group portfolio, I believe that we can solve the key barriers to refurbished — trust & convenience — at scale.”
Currently the FAQ page of eBay.in states about the upcoming shut down of the website and that ‘eBay.in will stop accepting new orders from 14th August, 2018’. Sellers can still list new items till 31st July 2018. If someone in India or abroad wishes to sell in India through eBay, has to do so through eBay.com.
The page lists all other possible seller queries and one can visit the page to know the procedures in detail. The Bengaluru based e-commerce company Flipkart, will gradually transition the seller’s platform and merge it with Flipkart over time. In his email, Krishnamurthy promises that Flipkart will bring in an ‘enhanced experience’ in refurbished goods market through its upcoming platform.
eBay and Flipkart relationship
eBay debuted in the Indian market in 2004 but despite of going through several mergers and investments eBay failed to garner a strong foothold in the face of contenders like Flipkart and Amazon India. In March last year, Flipkart went onto acquire the India operations of eBay, after raising $1.4 Billion in funding through Microsoft Corp., eBay Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.
After acquiring eBay’s India operations, Flipkart started globally outsourcing the company’s India platform. With this step, Flipkart was able to reach out to 200 global markets in selling its products.
Reports about eBay’s intention to dissociate from Flipkart started making noise since the beginning of 2018 after Flipkart-Walmart partnership. As a consequence of Flipkart’s shutting down of eBay.in, eBay now has to reconstitute its entire India operations and function on its own before it is able to tie up with other holdings or mergers.
