Big e-platforms are looking for small merchants

India: India’s largest ecommerce companies like Snapdeal, Paytm, Amazon and Flipkart are looking for small merchants who are selling lot of stuffs from their small stores. The ultimate goal is to increase the number of vendors so that they can attract more buyers.

Amazon India, the world’s largest online retailers aimed at 48 million SME sector in India which accounted for 17% of India’s GDP in 2014. There was 250% growth in sellers, over 55000 sellers sell on Amazon platform.

ShopClues also wants to double its sellers to 7.5 lakhs merchants by December by focusing on point of sale system.

Paytm is among the most aggressive in signing up the sellers like China’s Alibaba Group, its biggest investor. They had 1.7 lakhs sellers and 1 lakh of whom were verified with catalogues.

India aims to have 10 lakh small and medium sellers in 2-3 years as of 2.5 lakhs seller now.

According to Techsci Research, the results of this effort will be visible in 2016 i.e. the benefits of selling online. The big companies should also help small merchants in providing financial services, increasing warehousing capacity and practicing new technologies so that all they can fulfil all merchant requirements.

E-commerce companies can provide single- window access so that all sellers can be trained there and advertise their products and brands.

Increase in smartphones penetration, digital platform and value of transaction on their platforms would on board many sellers as possible.

According to a recently published report by TechSci Research “India E-commerce Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2020”, the country’s e-commerce market is projected to grow at a CAGR of more than 36% during 2015-2020. The e-tail segment that includes electronics, apparels & accessories, health and personal care, etc., is expected to witness significantly higher market growth compared to e-services segment over the next five years.