Dec 29, 2013 01:37 PM
11993 Views
In year Y2K, 2000 we were told that the online revolution is here; At that time it seemed all you required to have an online presence was a website with a front end with no back end logistics to speak of. The system duly collapsed and there we were back to the traditional offline model of buying goods.
The second wave came about 2- 3 years ago when everyone became aware that the offline activity was as important if not more than having a mere website. In this second wave came along Flipkart founded in 2007, by Sachin and Binny Bansal and head-quartered in Bangalore.The owners have previous experience of online retailing while working in Amazon and therefore the basic building blocks of the business were well in place right from the beginning.
Flipkart's offering of products on Cash on Delivery is considered to be one of the main reasons behind its success especially in a country where people are very reluctant to shop online with their credit/debit card.
About the offline activity – i.e. after you have placed your order, you are informed at every stage about the progress of your order right till the delivery of the item at your doorstep. In a few cases they do run out of stock and then cancel the order as delivery is not assured, this has happened to me twice. However refund was prompt.
At one time they had a feature called Wallet, you just fill up an electronic wallet by debiting your credit or debit card and then pay using the wallet, this prevents repeated usage of your card, in which some inherent risk is always there.They have now stopped this feature.
In February 2012, the company revealed its new Flyte Digital Music Store. Flyte was a legal music download service in the vein of iTunes and Amazon.com. But it was shut down in June 2013 as no one in India wanted to pay for song downloads especially when there were so many free music streaming sites.
They have a yearly sale everywhere around December January(part of the great Indian online sale) but to date I have not found any real steal deals during such sales.
From feedback on mouthshut.com on the Flipkart site, it is obvious quite a few people had issues buying stuff online.This is bound to happen as there are very few goods that you can buy without that touch and feel and this is where the challenge for Flipkart is going to be.
Has Flipkart been a success? It depends on which side of the coin you are looking at, it is still not a profitable business model for the vendor and the venture capitalists but for the consumer some items could not have been cheaper – two categories which stand out are books and music. You will find very few bookstores which sell books cheaper than Flipkart, so is the case with music CDs i.e. In every other category it has been a mixed bag with lots of unhappy consumers.
Will I buy a phone online on Flipkart? Probably not and therein lies the problem; in the end there are very few categories other than books and music where people will venture out online and till that changes, this will be a website that will continue to have limited value for the consumers.
Is there a future for this site-? At one time there was talk that they will run out of money in 2014 as any business model like this one requires to burn cash all the time especially when the returns are now exactly flowing?
Will I shop again on Flipkart? Definitely for books and music, possibly for low end consumer goods like pen drive, printers etc . You will not find books cheaper in any offline store, so if there is a book that you have honed onto, just go ahead and purchase it, you will not regret it .
Will I purchase perfumes and shoes from this site? Probably not; printer cartridges? Possibly ye, s if the pricing is right and distinctly lower than an offline store. Clothing & footwear(men and women) not a chance, you still cannot beat the comfort of a department store.
To sum up – stick to books and music on this site and you will remain a winner all the way. For any other items –please head to the nearest mall.
