News : फ्लिपकार्ट की भारी छूट पर गौर करेगी सरकारः सीतारमण
खुदरा बाजार की ओनलाइन कंपनी फ्लिपकार्ट की भारी छूट पर की गई बिक्री पर बहुत शिकायतें मिलने पर सरकार ने कहा है कि इस संबंध में गौर किया जाएगा और ई कामर्स के खुदरा कारोबार में स्पष्टता सुनिश्चित की जाएगी।
केंद्रीय वाणिज्य एवं उद्योग मंत्री निर्मला सीतारमण ने संवाददाताओं के एक सवाल के जवाब में कहा कि फ्लिपकार्ट की छूट पर की भारी बिक्री पर बहुत शिकायतें मिली है और सरकार इन पर गौर करेगी। खुदरा कारोबार की ओनलाइन कंपनी फ्लिपकार्ट ने सोमवार को भारी छूट पर ब्रिकी जिससे कंपनी ने 600 करोड़ रुपए का कारोबार किया। कंपनी की इस छूट पर कई कंपनियों और खुदरा कारोबारियों ने भारी आपत्ति दर्ज की है।
सीतारमण ने कहा कि बाजार में स्वस्थ प्रतिस्पर्धा रहने लिए स्पष्टता बनी रहनी चाहिए और सरकार खुदरा कारोबार की ऑनलाइन बिक्री में स्पष्टता बनाए रखने के लिए सभी उपाय किए जाएंगे
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FLIPKART ONLINE KHAREEDEE MEIN LOGO KO LUBHAANE MEIN LAGEE HAI.
YAHAN TAK KI SHOPPING MALLS KI BHEE CHUTTI HO JAYEGEE.
KHUDRA / RETAILERS KAROBAREE LOG FLIPKART, SNAPDEAL, AADI WEBSITE SE GHABRAA GAYE HAIN.
WEBSITE VAALON KO KOEE DUKAN AADI KA KHARCHAA NAHIN HOTAA, AUR 24 GHANTE BIKREE HOTEE HAI. KABHEE BHEE ORDER DE SAKTE HAIN.
ORDER MILNE KE BAAD AASANEE SE BULK DELIVERY HOTEE HAIN.
E COMMERCE KAROBAAR DIN BA DIN BHARAT MEIN BADTAA JAA RAHAA HAI.
AUR KHARBON RUPAY KA BAZAAR KHADAA HO GAYAA HAI.
AANE VAAALE SAMAY MEIN RETAILERS AUR KAMJOR HONE VAALE HAIN.
JAI TECHNOLOGY
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Future Group's Kishore Biyani, vendors accuse Flipkart of undercutting to destroy competition
Online vendors alleged that Flipkart and other big e-retailers are enjoying venture capital and FDI funds and are compelling vendors to sell at big discounts.Online vendors alleged that Flipkart and other big e-retailers are enjoying venture capital and FDI funds and are compelling vendors to sell at big discounts.
MUMBAI | NEW DELHI: A day after Flipkart recorded its biggest single-day sale of $100 million, top online retailers came under fire from offline rival Future Group as well as vendors using online marketplaces for selling products at below cost price on the back of foreign funding.
While the country's largest listed retailer Future Group accused online marketplaces such as Flipkart of adopting anti-competitive strategy by selling products below cost price, merchants who sell through these online marketplaces alleged that these sites are causing vendors to bleed by compelling them to sell products at lower than their buying prices.
"How can someone sell products below its manufacturing price? This is legally not allowed in the country. Someone can do such undercutting only to destroy competition. Just because they have foreign funding, they can't kill local trade like that," said Kishore Biyani, founder of Future Group.
He said there will be a movement by brands and retailers that will criticise these online retailers.
Future Group on Tuesday took a potshot at Flipkart's Big Billion Day sale of Monday by releasing an advertisement saying no deal can win the trust of a billion people and one has to earn it. "You can't take the nation for granted even for a day," said the ad, adding that Future Group stocks enough for everyone to buy and gives genuine offers and sales.
Policy to Regulate Pricing
Online vendors alleged that Flipkart and other big e-retailers are enjoying venture capital and FDI funds and are compelling vendors to sell at big discounts. Vendors also have to bear expenses such as delivery, shipment and return, reducing their margins even further.
"Online portals are causing the vendors to bleed by selling products at prices which are lower than the buying prices of the vendor," said Rahul Suri, convenor at the Online Vendors Association of India.
The association plans to create a forum for online vendors and develop a clear online vendor policy to regulate pricing and avoid such price disparity.
Manoj Kumar, who sells electronic goods online, said, "Online stores with their unfair business practices are killing the normal business of a vendor.
A laptop which I buy at Rs 58,000 was being sold on one of these marketplaces at Rs 51,000. There is no way I can match that offer." Vendors said that for the Big Billion Day Sale Flipkart had asked them to give discounts of 50% or more.
Flipkart did not respond to ET's email queries on these allegations as of press time.
Future Group Formula
Flipkart's latest initiative is reminiscent of Big Bazaar, the country's largest supermarket, when it started the concept of huge discounting across product categories around public holidays eight years ago that sometimes led to some of its outlets downing their shutters temporarily as the crowd became uncontrollable.
Currently, Future Group is running a 12-day sale that took off on October 1. "While it's too early to gauge festive demand, early indications in terms of sales has been average and there hasn't been any major impact from online sales," Biyani said.
Won't Match Online Offers
Brick-and-mortar retailers said the online sales are not at the cost of their festival season demand, and most of them have no plans to match the online offers.
"We are currently running a festive period offer, where upon shopping for a minimum value, customers get assured gift vouchers redeemable on their subsequent purchase. We have also tied up with banks to offer additional incentives to card holders," said Kabir Lumba, managing director at Lifestyle International, which expects strong double-digit growth in the festive season.
Nirzar Jain, VP, mall at Oberoi Realty, said most brands will be sold at full price. "While there will be usual offers and deals, the period will be about selling latest merchandise," he said.
J Suresh, MD of Arvind Lifestyle Brands, said, "We don't see any impact in apparel as Diwali generally brings new buyers in the stores which online players aren't targeting so aggressively. Also, we have an advantage of newer collections which isn't discounted even online."
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LG Electronics India,VP (sales) Sanjeev Aggarwal told the news site that his company steers clear of online retailers and partners selling LG products on Flipkart are not authorised trade partners. For instance, LG 32-inch LED backlit LCD TVs start from Rs 27,000 according to LG’s official website, but Flipkart was offering one 32-inch LG LED TV for as low as Rs 14,900
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Marketing war
In the race to win customers, e-commerce firms Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal are battling each other in a significantly costlier New Age version of the cola wars, using innovative tactics such as cheeky advertising taglines and hashtags on social media to undercut one another.
This marketing war reached its peak—both online and offline—on Monday.
Snapdeal, promoted by Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, ran a print media campaign on Monday mocking Flipkart’s sale with the tagline: “For others it’s a big day. For us, today is no different.” While anyone who typed BigBillionDay.com on their browsers landed on the Amazon.in site.
To counter Flipkart’s #bigbillionday hashtag, Snapdeal came up with #checksnapdealtoday, which was one of the top used hashtags on the social media site Twitter on Monday. A hashtag is a common message in comments by people on social media. Flipkart’s sale was mentioned in more than 15,000 hashtags, a mix of favourable and critical comments, on Twitter and Facebook on Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“We only wanted to communicate to the user to check Snapdeal, and the reason why it was trending yesterday was because of the story that unfolded where there was a lot of backlash for some of the competition out there and people started checking Snapdeal and started sharing “checksnapdeal” and it went viral,” said Sandeep Komaravelly, senior vice-president of marketing at Snapdeal.
Snapdeal and Amazon also purchased key “search words” such as the names of mobile phone brands and others, so that a user searching for these brands would be shown ads of the e-commerce sites.
“Not surprised that Snapdeal and Amazon worked to piggyback for free on the big Flipkart marketing campaign—it’s a great example of guerrilla marketing,” said Ravi Gururaj, an angel investor and member of the Nasscom Product and Executive Council. “In today’s hyper-competitive, multi-channel, noisy marketing landscape, companies must build competitor and community ‘involvement’ or ‘interference’ into any marketing campaign they plan. It’s a free-for-all world out there and often the company paying the big bucks for the original campaign idea finds itself drowned out in the ensuing hullabulla.”
Flipkart had marketed its Big Billion Day sales extensively, both online and offline. The company informed all its customers about the sale through emails over the weekend, and ran ads on YouTube, Facebook and others sites, among other things.
“Obviously, there were things we could have done better, like registering the domain bigbillionday.com,” said Mausam Bhatt, senior director, online marketing, Flipkart. “We have good learning around how to shape demand for such properties in future. In future, if we have to do such a thing again, we will think of doing more of exclusive inventory buys, media buys that would lock out competition.”
Partly because of the mistakes by Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon ended up spending their marketing budgets more efficiently than their bigger Indian rival, said Jessie Paul, chief executive officer at Paul Writer, a Bangalore-based marketing advisory firm.
“It was not like a week-long sale, it was one day; so if you make a mistake on the day, you do not even have the opportunity to go back and fix it the next day. In offline, too, you would hardly see anyone spend this kind of money on a single day sale,” Paul said.
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Kishore Biyani takes on e-tailers in advertising campaign
As leading e-tailers Flipkart and Snapdeal have raised the pitch in the fierce competition for attracting customers during the festive season, bricks and mortar giant Future Group struck back with the tagline on Tuesday: "No deal can win the trust of a billion people, you have to earn it."
This appeared to be an oblique reference to the discount bonanzas being offered by e-tailers. The Kishore Biyani run physical retailer further stated in an ad blitz: "You can't take a nation for granted even for a day.
Since 15 years, we have always offered honest promotions and discounts. We stock enough to let everyone benefit only to give you the most genuine offers and sales."
Future Group upped the ante with the ad campaign offering 'free shopping' to its customers through points earned on Future Group shopping cards. The offer is valid till October 12.
The 'free shopping' card, earned through points on goods bought from Future Group formats, is valid for the following 12 months, the company said.
Meanwhile, Flipkart continued with its aggressive campaign to lure customers with its fashion subsidiary Myntra coming up with a Cracker Sale on Tuesday.
Myntra is offering up to 50 per cent off on goods ranging from apparel to shoes that include top brands such as Adidas and Puma. Apparel from United Colours of Benetton are being offered at a 40-per cent discount. The discount was even higher at 60 per cent for ethnic wear that included sarees, salwars, kurtas and kurtis.
In addition, Myntra is offering attractive gifts such as Maruti Swift, 55 inch LED LCD TV and mobile phones, and digiflop pro tablets for lucky buyers.
The company is also offering 10 gm gold vouchers that could be won in the lucky draw for buyers. Several of these discount schemes are available till Oct 31.
However, there may be a catch in some items which carry a very high price tag to start with. For instance, some Berry shirts are priced at Rs 7,199 and after 43-per cent discount still cost around Rs 3,600 apiece.
The pre-Diwali bonanza offered by e-tailers has dented margins of offline stores with more people preferring to shop at a click of the mouse. Manmeet Singh, manager at United Colours of Benetton, said, "As exclusive stores, we do not offer sales except seasonal ones. Sometimes, people try out a shirt but buy it online. We can't afford to give discounts because we have to take care of our overheads such as electricity bill, staff salaries, rent, etc." Naveen Kumar Jha, of Mobile Store, agreed. "The online sales yesterday (Monday) affected our business, which went down by more than 40 per cent."
However, Suraj Kumar, manager at Croma, differs. "The sales haven't affected our business. They began the sale at 8 am and by 10.30 am, most of the goods were out of stock.
