Intex Technologies has launched an ecommerce site called WishNBuy which will have 100 brands and over 30,000 products across multiple categories. Another Economic Times report points out that WishNBuy is a separate entity which pitched to other phone manufacturers like Samsung, Micromax and Lava etc. to sell on the platform.
The Delhi based company has tied up with Delhivery and Aramex for logistics. Currently, WishNBuy claims to deliver to 19,000 pin codes and expects to have 500,000 registered users and 2 million visitors by this year end. WishNBuy says that the company will focus exclusively on sports and health products and offer unique products and services. As of now, the company has products across mobiles, consumer electronics, health and sports, fashion, automobile accessories and home appliances.
The report cites Madhur Arora, GM of strategy and ecommerce at Intex, as saying that the company will compete with existing ecommerce player in 3-5 years. This seems like a decent time frame to actually see the business take off, but the fact is that existing ecommerce players have been pumping huge amounts of money into their companies.
Funding in ecommerce in India
– In March this year, Flipkart got a Rs 450 crore ($67 million) line of credit from HDFC Bank. So far, Flipkart has raised $3.12 billion from 12 rounds of funding from 16 investors.
– Last month, Amazon invested Rs 115 crore ($17 million) in its wholesale business in India. In June, Amazon announced a $3 billion (Rs 20,000 crore) into its India unit, after it invested $202 million and $290 million in its India unit this year. So far, Amazon has invested $5 billion in Amazon India.
– In August, Snapdeal raised $21 million from Clouse SA and was a part of previously announced $200 million funding tranche in February. Snapdeal had also raised $500 million in August last year and $627 million in October 2014. So far Snapdeal has raised $1.3 billion.
Not just funding, ecommerce companies have been investing in logistics and offline hubs to speed up their deliveries and create a bigger user base, especially from Tier 2, 3 and 4 areas (see Amazon Udaan).
Intex revenues and wallet launch
Intex reported revenues of Rs 6,213 crore ($930 million) for March 2016 fiscal, up 70% from Rs 3,652 crore ($546 million) in the previous fiscal. The report added that Intex is planning to expand its local manufacturing and invest Rs 1,000 crore ($149 million) for manufacturing phones, washing machines, TVs and consumer goods. Yesterday, Intex partnered with Tata Teleservices’ mRupee to launch Intex MyWallet, which would let its users make recharges, money transfers, book tickets and shop etc.
