Alibaba has plans already set to start operations in the Indian market. The company has already hired and trained the team secretly and they are ready to launch their first service offerings in the market. The presence of the Chinese-based company on the Indian soil is likely to change the shape and form of the whole e-commerce industry in the country.
The company launched the Paytm Mall app in February this year, which is a consumer app for shoppers, which would compete with other products from Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Amazon offerings based in the country. The newly launched Paytm Mall is an Android-based app for the latest smartphones that has come at the time when the market is dominated by the Amazon and Flipkart.
The India’s e-commerce sector has experienced challenges last year when several companies almost collapsed including the Flipkart and Snapdeal companies that drastically reduced their workforce and cut down their operational expenses as a mechanism to remain in business. The firms have continuously struggled to outperform the giant competitor, Amazon.
The stiff competition in the Indian market has seen the industry growth slump down to 12% with 14.5 billion in the last year compared to the sector’s performance in 2015, which marked $13 billion, according to the findings from RedSeer Consulting. Therefore, the entry of Alibaba to the already struggling e-commerce market in India could be the best reliever to the consumers and the industry in general.
The company has already invested more than $200 million in Paytm making the company to become a unicorn as it’s currently valued at about $1 billion. The company has extended its service offerings to more than 0.14 million local retailers and a huge number of consumers with an aim to take over the online shopping market in the country.
The statistics from the Indian market show that Amazon has roughly 500 million products on its online platform and Flipkart and Snapdeal trade about 50 million products in the market. Paytm would become the Alibaba’s focal point with sellers coming from Lazada, and other foreign countries including US and European continents.
