[thoma]

And now flipkart.com lets others sell their products through the site under "More sellers selling this product on flipkart.com"

http://www.flipkart.com/keyboard-k12...d-88cf8076eca3

[Fordmanchau]

Now I realised why it said the seller as WS Retail after I ordered the Samsung Glaxy Grand from Flipkart.

I checked other websites too, but no one except Flupkart was running the Samsung's offer of 12 months EMI with no interest and processing fee.
Is Flipkart slowly going to be like Ebay ?

[bejoy]

^^ Flipkart did some restructuring recently, following the recent probe by the ED regarding the FDI violations. Its operations was sold to WS retail and now Flipkart is technically a firm located in Singapore.

More details here.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiati...dian-investors

And regarding the "other sellers", yes it might be going an ebay way.

BTW, i don't see much merit shopping at flipkart nowadays, as many stuff takes long time to ship. I see that the "power sellers" in ebay are doing very good job lately. Many have overnight priority shipping using FedEx. Anyway, choice is good for consumers

[thoma]

Originally Posted by bejoy

Its operations was sold to WS retail and now Flipkart is technically a firm located in Singapore.

Just a small clarification. I am sure I received packets labelled WS Retail since long long back from Flipkart. To add, the article says "A group of Indian investors led by former OnMobile COO Rajiv Kuchhal has acquired e-commerce poster boy Flipkart's front-end operations company WS Retail Services"

Further from the article, "Flipkart, which incorporated a new parent company in Singapore some months ago, has US investors" might have triggered any FDI violation probe and hence selling off WS Retail Services?

[sdp1975]

Flipkart is laying off employees if media reports are to be believed. Slowdown is finally affecting flipkart as well !

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/t...w/20062493.cms

[deehunk]

It looks like Flipkart has stopped selling consumer electronics products like Television, dvd players and related stuffs. The Consumer electronics and Car accessories category has been removed.

[hrman]

They have also closed down their Flyte online music shop. Sad to see them go this way. They were doing so well when they started out. Great prices, speedy and next to perfect service. I have had a great experience with them in the past. However, when their prices started to increase, I found infibeam more attractive.

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by deehunk

It looks like Flipkart has stopped selling ...

Originally Posted by hrman

They have also closed down their Flyte online music shop. ...

Rationalizing the product lines, removing stuff that have more problems than financial returns. Savvy investor forcing smart decisions. Did you know Myntra, Zansar and Flipkart share investors who call the shots and keep them in clear silos?

Flyte's main problem was micro-payments - none of the existing payment methods support small online payments (<INR100) efficiently, and no one is that desperate to maintain a credit balance in the Flyte wallet. Their tracks costed 15-30 on an average.

[Soumyajit9]

A close friend of mine joined Flipkart and just moved to B'lore 2 months back. So I asked him how was the new job and the company performance. His response was quite shocking.

He said that Flipkart is still a loss-making company, after operating for more than 5 years. He says that when Flipkart started up, it had a loss making period of 2 years, by which it would have become a famous brand and could start making profits. But it didn't go the way they expected. Their major losses started coming from Books. With 2nd had online book stores selling cheap copies of books, they could not sell books at a profitable margin. They also tried to keep up their 24-48 hour commitment by investing in expensive courier companies like Blue Dart and DHL. So while they sold a book at Rs 200, it costed them an additional Rs.75-100 to ship the book. Another example he cited - Flipkart in B'lore did not have stock of a particular book. So they procured it from Mumbai and got it delivered to a customer in B'lore. To keep up the commitment of deliver, they had to courier it with Urgent option which costed them a bomb in comparison to regular courier charges.

For expensive consumer electronics (like TV, Music system,etc) , they bear the insurance charges and their profit margin is much lesser. Plus they have to maintain a godown of all their products.

All in all, he said that there is a tremendous pressure on him and his team to meet some targets. I didn't understand much of the terms he used. But what I could infer from the conversation was that Flipkart is dying a slow death.

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

He said that Flipkart is still a loss-making company, after operating for more than 5 years.

The fact is all the online retailers in India (not including ebay as online retailer) are in red. The question is who will go down earlier.

But what I could infer from the conversation was that Flipkart is dying a slow death.

As long the investors keep pumping money, they are fine.

[Turbo_Charger]

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

They also tried to keep up their 24-48 hour commitment by investing in expensive courier companies like Blue Dart and DHL.

Correct me if wrong, but I always had the impression that Flipkart was troubled by the courier companies in the delay of payment from the Cash on Delivery option and hence they created their own Courier and Logistics Company (e-Kart) from scratch. This way they had control over the cash flows and there were no delays too. Now they are offering the same resources to other sellers willing to sell on their platform.

That they are in loss is a given. I was reading a recent article in Hindustan Times about Just Dial IPO and it was written that if the IPO is successful, many major e-Commerce Sites are looking ahead for an IPO I found it strange since SEBI dictates that a company has to generating Profit before filing for an IPO and almost all e-Commerce Companies are in Deep Red.

[manolin]

Originally Posted by thoma

Just a small clarification. I am sure I received packets labelled WS Retail since long long back from Flipkart. To add, the article says "A group of Indian investors led by former OnMobile COO Rajiv Kuchhal has acquired e-commerce poster boy Flipkart's front-end operations company WS Retail Services"

Further from the article, "Flipkart, which incorporated a new parent company in Singapore some months ago, has US investors" might have triggered any FDI violation probe and hence selling off WS Retail Services?

basically FDI is not permitted in e commerce. So what companies do is create a back end supply company into which the FDI is routed (which is anyways the most resource hungry part of these e commerce sites). Similar structuring was done by bharti walmart etc. when fdi in retail was not allowed.

[vindrider2626]

I feel these online retailers are quoting high prices these days.last week i bought the nikon d5100 from a shop in my city for 30000 but in infibeam and other retailers it is quoting at 33900.I think we ought to check prices with local stores before buying from online retailers.

[Soumyajit9]

Originally Posted by Turbo_Charger

Correct me if wrong, but I always had the impression that Flipkart was troubled by the courier companies in the delay of payment from the Cash on Delivery option and hence they created their own Courier and Logistics Company (e-Kart) from scratch.

Yeah, its true. I have seen those e-Kart bags that Flipkart guys carry.

That they are in loss is a given. I was reading a recent article in Hindustan Times about Just Dial IPO and it was written that if the IPO is successful, many major e-Commerce Sites are looking ahead for an IPO I found it strange since SEBI dictates that a company has to generating Profit before filing for an IPO and almost all e-Commerce Companies are in Deep Red.

That just went over my head. But what I feel is that if "SEBI dictates that a company has to generating Profit before filing for an IPO", its a good directive. At the end of the day, the Govt doesn't want the public to lash it for ruining their money.

[Turbo_Charger]

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

That just went over my head.

The article mentioned that many e-commerce sites like Flipkart, Myntra, Jabong etc are keenly watching the Just Dial IPO and if it's successful, they will also try for an IPO. I found that ironic and strange since all of them are still making losses, so how will they launch an IPO since they need to be making profits to be eligible in the first place.