World’s biggest ecommerce company Amazon wants to dominate the $300 billion Indian business-to-business (B2B) market, and they have already started the preparations. As per reports coming in, it has been found that Amazon is already in talks with various merchants and wholesalers in India who can join them initially.
Samir Kumar, who is Amazon’s director of category management, may lead this project and the wholesale team would directly report to Amazon India head Amit Agarwal.
Amazon has not confirmed this news, as they have shared their usual response during such rumors: “As a policy, we do not comment on anything that we may or may not do in the future.”
Considering that there is no restriction for FDI in B2B niche in India, Amazon can infact infuse billions of dollars into their portal to make it real big.
Interestingly, US is the only country in the world where Amazon is currently offering B2B platform for wholesalers and merchants. Their B2B portal: Amazon Supply, which was launched in 2012 and has become quite popular among wholesale dealers in the US.
But the question which arises now, why is Amazon in such a hurry? They have debuted into retail eCommerce in India since last year, and still fighting with Flipkart and other domestic ecommerce players to get a hold in the market.
The Alibaba Factor
Alibaba, which is world’s biggest B2B portal and China’s top ecommerce site is also planning to enter India, and if they enter before Amazon does, then it will be a big loss for them. In the US, Alibaba has already opened their B2B platform before their IPO launch, which could be worth $21 billion.
B2B Is Big In India
Earlier this year, while mentioning the top trends of ecommerce this year, we had mentioned that B2B is going to be the real big thing this year. Any veteran of businesses will confirm that the real money lies in this space. As per reports by Wal-Mart, Indian B2B is right now worth $300 billion, which will expand to $700 billion by 2020.
Sensing this huge opportunity, several companies have already started B2B platforms:
Wal-Mart: In July this year, Wal-Mart debuted their ecommerce presence in India as they launched their portal: BestPriceWholesale.co.in which is currently serving only Lucknow and Hyderabad, but will very soon expand to other cities as well.
Metro: German based retail giant Metro is already operating in India with 5 outlets, plan to expand to 50 outlets by 2019. They have been operating since last 10 years in selected cities and for the last fiscal, they have reported a loss of loss of Rs 272 crore on a turnover of Rs 2,521 crore.
TataB2B: Tata has quietly launched their B2B portal in India wherein wholesalers and retailers can meet and communicate and take their business forward.
IndiaMart: IndiaMart is one of the oldest and most popular B2B portals in India, having more than 15 years of experience in this niche. If Amazon decides to start their operations, they will have to meet major resistance from strong local players such as IndiaMart. (however, IndiaMart is more of a B2B marketplace)
Will Amazon able to crack the code for B2B success in India? Or will Alibaba become the final winner?
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[…] of their operations and also opened store pick-up centers in Delhi and Mumbai. Talks are also on to start their B2B operations very soon; along with introduction of Amazon Prime in India and rumors of acquiring […]
The author here in missed that flipkart too has moved in the B2B category with a tie up, with FISME
A body that represents the SMEs