[Sankar]

Whatever, but the quality of Letsbuy service is still in the pits where as Flipkart provides excellent service. Some of my colleagues have had problems with Letsbuy, mostly with incorrect product information and delay in shipping.

Example: A colleague bought a Shaver that runs on AA batteries (as per info given a their site) and 4 AA rechargeable batteries. When the items came, after much delay, he found that the shaver actually runs on AAA batteries. He called up letsbuy CC and arranging an exchange was much of a hassle having to speak to mutiple people the same thing and repeat the whole thing again and again.

I bought a Sony Ericsson cedar from them and the shipping took too long and had to follow up twice with them regarding it.

Anyway that was old news and i thought Flipkart takeover must've had some positive effect. But no, it was in vain.. :(

Today and after a looong break i decided to buy something from letsbuy, a camera bag. I came across caselogic SLDC202 listed for Rs 795 and looking at the product pic i thought this was a really good deal for the money and clicked buy without thinking much. Only after i bought the case did i google the model and found to my utter dismay that the model shown in the product listing is completely different from the actual thing shown at caselogic's website!!!! Quckly sent them an email asking to cancel the order and i'm yet to hear from them.

See for yourself!
Actual SDLC202


From letsbuy

[sunishsamuel]

Its interesting to see whats happening in the ecommerce industry. These kinds of deals are always wrapped with a cover to not reveal what actually happens in the background.

You may also want to read this article:

Letsbuy and Flipkart – A marriage of INCONVENIENCE!!

This is why Amazon's Junglee is gonna SMASH the B**ls of Indian e-Commerce players

I never had bad experiences from any websites except flipkart.com. and find a marketplace like ebay.in better, as i have more choices of prices and items to search for. Delivery was never a problem for ebay.in

Junglee.com trying that route initially while they setup their strategy in India.

Whatever said, currently e-commerce in India seems to be hyped a bit more than it should be and if you look deep, most of the companies have been splurging on the money investor gave and not building up the strategy that can help survive longer term. (have seen couple of them closely) Letsbuy was considered a poster boy of ecommerce and supposedly doing good, and reading the articles it seems they ran out of cash and were working on negative margins.

But i should also not forget the advantage online shopping gave us. Offline prices have become really competitive.

When the prices on leading websites for a galaxy S2 with one year warranty was 29,999 i could pick the same phone for 30,000 Rs. all inclusive +2 year warranty, insurance and a 16GB memory card

[ghpk]

Have done lot of shopping at letsbuy and flipkart in last 1 yr.
Infact I loved the coupons on letsbuy and helped many friends' in ordering laptops and digital cams.

However flipkart service is best, but certainly they charge little premium on pricing over letsbuy.
However flipkart is great for books and music titles.

To my comparison I was never able to get the pricing in a local store for electronic items available on flipkart/letsbuy, Letsbuy was best till it had coupons :-)

I am sure coming year would make many online stores to start throwing heavy discounts as price war would be at its best.

Bye bye Letsbuy, Hope flipkart would give some coupons to help the regulars keep buying and recommending...

[indian21r]

From what I have observed with Indian Firms, both Retail and online, they are trying there best to maximize footfalls /visitors. Targets are to grab as much market as possible in short time and be acquired by someone else.

This is really beneficial when they showcase to International vendors who plan on getting a footprint in India. Firms such walmart, tesco, Lidl etc are awed by the amount of visitors that a store can attract. They will be happy acquire brands like, Bigbazaar (sell a lot of crappy stuff), letsbuy, subiksha etc which have built strong loyalty inspite of the fact that current sales per visitor are low.

• Lets take the example of letsbuy here.
• For online purchases initially, I was looking at all the sites. But letsbuy deals/ coupons, Market feedback and speed of delivery tilted in their favor.
• After 3 purchases, I do not look beyond letsbuy as I have gained confidence on the products shipped by them. I have a comfort zone with them
• I go there first when I have to do online shopping. Only if they do not have the product do I look at other stores.
• They have succeeded in attracting a lot of market (even though they were bleeding)

[carboy]

Originally Posted by indian21r

This is really beneficial when they showcase to International vendors who plan on getting a footprint in India. Firms such walmart, tesco, Lidl etc are awed by the amount of visitors that a store can attract. They will be happy acquire brands like, Bigbazaar (sell a lot of crappy stuff), letsbuy, subiksha etc which have built strong loyalty inspite of the fact that current sales per visitor are low.

Letsbuy's annual gross revenue is around 150-200 crore Rs. Flipkart is around 500 crore.

One single walmart store in the US (average one) probably does as much business as Flipkart annually.

I seriously doubt if Walmart will ever be interested in Flipkart & Letsbuy.

[indian21r]

Originally Posted by carboy

Letsbuy's annual gross revenue is around 150-200 crore Rs. Flipkart is around 500 crore. One single walmart store in the US (average one) probably does as much business as Flipkart annually. I seriously doubt if Walmart will ever be interested in Flipkart & Letsbuy.

Agreed but What I meant is for such players, it is easy to get market access immediately. Setting up a distribution channel, market building etc will take a lot of time. Walmart is quite well known but it is not the same for a lot of other players. Not Walmart but bestbuy or some other online seller will be interested in letsbuy etc.

[Fordmanchau]

@sankar: I am surprised to read your account. Yes, when handling such large number of SKU's which are identical some mismatch of description and picture can happen but you experienced poor service more than once and that is surprising!
I availed there service for 4 times and all the times I had nothing to complain. The fifth time I had to cancel the order as I ordered for BB Playbook from them, which they didn't have stock of. Though they offered us a alternative device at same price, we refused.

Originally Posted by ghpk

Infact I loved the coupons on letsbuy and helped many friends' in ordering laptops and digital cams.

However flipkart service is best, but certainly they charge little premium on pricing over letsbuy. Letsbuy was best till it had coupons :-)

Same here, I loved their coupons. That guaranteed almost the lowest price among all the e-vendors. Would you believe it if i say that I bought my canon550D from them at just 31.1K last year in July!!
Flipkart is always pricier than letsbuy, be it any product.

Originally Posted by ghpk

Bye bye Letsbuy,

Hang on!! It's not bye bye Letsbuy yet. Letsbuy will continue to survive as an independent retailer. They are strong in consumer durable products like computers, phone ,etc and they will continue to exist as an independent website.
Read about it here.
It's official: Flipkart Acquires LetsBuy. Our Take – “Welcome Junglee. You have set the Jungle on Fire”.

Originally Posted by indian21r

Lets take the example of letsbuy here.

• For online purchases initially, I was looking at all the sites. But letsbuy deals/ coupons, Market feedback and speed of delivery tilted in their favor.
• After 3 purchases, I do not look beyond letsbuy as I have gained confidence on the products shipped by them. I have a comfort zone with them
• I go there first when I have to do online shopping. Only if they do not have the product do I look at other stores.
• They have succeeded in attracting a lot of market (even though they were bleeding)

Same here, I always look at Letsbuy first and then look elsewhere.
They have surely used the penetrating pricing to get the customer base, which is the most important number that a investor will look at initially. Afterwards the focus shift to bottomline during the phase of consolidation, after the initial high growth period.

@Sunish: Thank you for the link, that was an interesting read.

[sunishsamuel]

Now the latest on this. Amazon gets to set up a courier service in India.

Breaking: Amazon Gets Approval to Setup its Courier Service in India

Seems Reliance is also planning big on the online e-retailing space. They are betting big, it seems. They cannot be discounted off knowing how they came up with their CDMA service and slashed telecom rates

For the customers, its good time. More and more companies and choices.

Add:

To survive, most of the retail shops keep talking about customer loyalty and seems couple of the e-retailers are super confident that once they build customer loyalty, they would be able to survive, even if their prices are high. I really doubt that.

[Leistung]

The E commerce scene is heating up in India. This is not the end of competition but the beginning of competition. There is Homshop18 and ebay that are among the top 3 companies and doing great business. Amazon is entering India this year and more in the pipeline waiting for FDI bill to get cleared. This is good for us customers as competition is getting intense and prices will be very competitive. Today you can pick up a mobile online way cheaper than any offline retailer because these companies often subsidize the price- Customer wins! You can buy a Samsung Galaxy note for Rs.30800 online, can a offline retailer match this?? Never!

Good times for customers, shop online and get the best deal.

[Fordmanchau]

Originally Posted by Leistung

Good times for customers, shop online and get the best deal.

I agree with you Leistung. The consolidation in the e-commerce sector may just be the sign of starting of the fierce competition among the major online players.
Customers are sure to gain. And even though Letsbuy has been acquired , I am getting the promo mails from them, each with different promotional offers. So looks like, its all good here for customers.

[Bluengel180]

Amazon just did. got an email promoting junglee.com as thier official partner.And they have quite a large inventory too

[shankar.balan]

Small submission here.

Their topline turnover is roughly what you say it is - the value of transactions as a "throughput" via their e commerce engine.

The EBIDTA and PAT are way less, given that the margins available in these businesses is rather poor.End of the day they are retailers dealing in relatively low margin items. What they may save in terms of not having invested in brick and mortar retail spaces tends to be eaten up by the cost of logistics, packaging and delivery.

Thing is, they have built a good brand based on the "delivery" experience. But this does not automatically mean that they are profitable as yet.

Amazon on the other hand took quite a while to get to where it is today. They play on very slim margins indeed and are content to do so. One of their USP's is delivery experience. Indeed, they own their own aircraft and logistics wing - Flipkart has taken a leaf out of their book and created its own logistics and warehousing wing in a bid to try to control the delivery experience.

Originally Posted by carboy

Letsbuy's annual gross revenue is around 150-200 crore Rs. Flipkart is around 500 crore.

One single walmart store in the US (average one) probably does as much business as Flipkart annually.

I seriously doubt if Walmart will ever be interested in Flipkart & Letsbuy.

[sen2009]

Originally Posted by iceman7

IMO, for a retail e-venture to be successful, you need to have a robust Supply Chain, easy web interface and a efficient customer support framework to complement. FlipKart meets all 3 parameters. Proof of their success is that they received institutional funding in January.

My personal experience with them has been pretty good too. I bought a MP3 player few months ago and a Samsung Galaxy Note in December. I am going to say this. FlipKart was FAST with awesome cust service.

I am also going to make a prediction here - Give it another year and Flipkart will be the largest online retailer in India.

I am planning to buy a Galaxy Note from Flipkart. They are offering a price of 32.7 K (+500 for 6 months EMI fee) against 33.5K (+699 for 6 months EMI fee) in Chroma. I am inclined to buy it from flipkart. But there are a number of negative reviews on mouthshut, hence I'm a bit scared.

What do the bhpians advise? Should I do it on flipkart or rather be safe at chroma?

[thewhiteknight]

I've been shopping from Flipkart for a while now and have not had any problems. Good delivery service, lower prices, good customer care. That just about covers it for me.

I would go with Flipkart!

[anandtheleo]

Originally Posted by sen2009

I am planning to buy a Galaxy Note from Flipkart. They are offering a price of 32.7 K (+500 for 6 months EMI fee) against 33.5K (+699 for 6 months EMI fee) in Chroma. I am inclined to buy it from flipkart. But there are a number of negative reviews on mouthshut, hence I'm a bit scared.

What do the bhpians advise? Should I do it on flipkart or rather be safe at chroma?

Got my Samsung Wave 3 for 15900 last week from Flipkart. Immaculate packaging and prompt delivery. You can look at Croma if you don't want to wait for 3-4 days of wait after ordering