India is growing in many ways. We are growing in population, worldwide influence and, most importantly, financially. Today India is one the fastest growing e-commerce markets in the world and, as with all growth, we are seeing stiff competition come our way. Entities such as Amazon India, Flipkart and Shopclues are growing E-Commerce platforms in India; however, few are growing as Snapdeal. Indeed, Snapdeal, with its recent purchase, FreeCharge for approximately US$400 – US$450 million dollars, is gearing up to move away from using the Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) as the metric it uses to chart its progress and growth to one of using its 20 million daily users as its metric.
FreeCharge is a company based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, which provides the ability to recharge any prepaid mobile phone, DTH & Data Cards in India right online. When SnapDeal purchased FreeCharge, it acquired the ability to provide its customers not only a platform for buying things, but also the ability to pay for them. SnapDeal is a New Delhi company which was just started only 6 years ago in 2010 and already has a valuation of approximately US$5 Billion dollars and over 5,000 employees.
Unfortunately we have seen this movie before and it did not end so well. In 2002 the US E-Commerce giant Ebay purchased the payment system PayPal for US$1.5 Billion dollars. The goal for Ebay was to provide its E-customers not only with the ability to purchase its goods, but also with the ability to pay for them online. This strategy is also what apparently SnapDeal seems to be thinking with its purchase of FreeCharge. If, as people say, the past is prologue to the future, then things may not bode well for the SnapDeal purchase of FreeCharge. In 2015, just 13 years after Ebay purchased it, PayPal, was removed from Ebay and became an independent company. Thus, we see that the goal of “one stop solutions” whereby you can get your coffee, dress pants and television all in one store, is not as easy in the E-commerce world.
We at IndiaFreelancers.com encourage our programmers and developers to keep an eye out for what happens next with SnapDeal, FreeCharge, Amazon India and other E-Commerce sites which operate in India. Yes we in India are growing, but with growth come problems and things we never expected. Therefore, yes let’s grow but let’s also be careful and vigilant because the landscape, like the seasons, can change at any time.
Ranjiv P for IndiaFreelancers.com
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