MediaNama had learned from reliable sources that MIH (Naspers) and Tencent owned company Ibibo is planning to venture into the e-commerce space, under the brand name Tradus. We were also told that Rahul Sethi, head of e-commerce for Web18, who was previously with FutureBazaar, EBay and Baazee is joining ibibo. Ashish Kashyap, CEO of ibibo, confirmed to MediaNama that they have plans to launch an e-commerce business, and that Sethi is coming on board to head the e-commerce business, but declined to share details of plans at this point in time. Kashyap himself used to head E-Commerce at Indiatimes, before he joined Google, following which he joined Ibibo as CEO.
We looked up Tradus.in, and the portal already appears to be operational. The logo, though, is different from an MIH owned international e-commerce business of the same name.
From what we’ve learned, the e-commerce business is going to be primarily business-to-consumers (b2c) and consumers-to-consumers (c2c) focused, and will allow ibibo to leverage its existing user base: it appears to be an attempt to take on Ebay India, rather than TradeIndia or Indiamart.
Tradus is a brand owned by Naspers, the parent company of MIH. It was acquired by Naspers in 2008, at a valuation of around GBP 946 million. Some details here. The company has operations in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Switzerland, Romania, Russia, Estonia, Ukraine and United Kingdom.
E-commerce in India has been something of a problem child: while ticketing and books appear to do well (Indian Railways sells over $120 million in tickets every month), there are issues with delivery, quality of goods delivered, payment gateways, among other things. One part of the problem is the lack of scale, which makes warehousing unviable, and hence goods are sold by vendors through marketplaces. As an example, take a look at this account of issues faced while purchasing goods from Rediff Shopping; a recent experience I had with Rediff Shopping mirrors this, though I’m still in the process of getting my problem sorted out. Unfortunately, the poor experience and customer service makes us hesitant to use e-commerce for anything but tickets and books.
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14 Comments until now.
I agree that e-commerce in India is still not reliable. I have also faced similar issues with sites like ebay and indiatimes. Nowadays, I just stick to train tickets at irctc and airline tickets. My experience with buying books with Indiaplaza.in over several years has been quite good.
I hope tradus manage their ecom portal better.
MIH is a big e-commerce player in Europe and Africa. Let's hope they do well. When is amazon coming to India, waiting for them. Otherwise, for me it is just IRCTC and books at Indiaplaza.
i can claim to be a savvy online shopper – have never faced any issues (luckily).rediff and ebay both work amazingly well and they have robust backend – so dunno what issues we are talking about.
yes there are issues of delivery, infrastructure, payment gateways but its not that bad
I agree with Abhishek. I have been shopping online and whether it is electronics at rediff, ebay, indiatimes or books, DVDs at indiaplaza, I have been quite satisfied. I feel a few customer cases are splashed around but these are a small percentage.
I often come to IBIBO and have had a look at tradus about a Month back!
Site looks neat and usable. Mr Kashyap has been in some good news recently and this is another feather in his cap created by a competent bunch of people working on the project
Why are so many people leaving Web 18? Does any one know?
Its good for ibibo as they have the infrastrucrure and they have the resource to execute an ecomm product. In fact its not a recent development because Suneet Manchanda (Ex head of Sify Mall) joined ibibo some 2 years back and since then was working on the development of ecomm platform for ibibo. Its good to see Suneet's efforts will finally be visible on computer screens
Organizations like IBIBO do not survive on individuals but yes to have people like Suneet Manchanda running the show in E-commerce is definitely a big plus.
Yes Jayesh, Suneet Manchanda is the person behind this project. Rajiv I differ because more often than not the organisations after all depends/survive on individuals especially the start ups who absolutely need smarter work force and leaders to define. And yes one engineer leaving Infosys is definitely not going to make any difference. You rightly said that Suneet is a big plus for the project. I look forward to see the success.
ecomm is a tuff nut to crack in india & is much visible with companies like RDFF, ebay futurebzr just not able to build any traction after pumping in so much of resources. i am not sure how differently they intend to approach the same.. baazee was a success and a great job done by avnish & suvir. i hope kashyap and sethi are able to create something on the same lines. wish you luck as i know you would need loads of it :)
who else moved out of web18;
i guess only rahul & rishi…
joyson family would be a happy lot :)
I think there is a problem with the management due to which good people cant stick around for long. I mean if someone is serious about ones career they would not want to hang around such an unprofessional company would they. The only benefit they have is the TV18 advantage which is the big brand here
online shopping is getting better with every coming day. My experience has been really nice with shoppersstop.com. I have shopped branded apparels as well as books. The experience was nice. hope to shop there again…
online shopping is always a good option its just you have to give a little emphasis on what you are pucrchasing and who is the seller. i will recommend you to always check feedback on seller before placing order. this will help you in figuring out the actual scenario of the seller. also at http://www.tradus.in have exciting range of products and all the sellers are genuine. tradus dont indulge itself in malpractices. and for customer service tradus have a dedicated CRM team.