1. IS E-COMMERCEDAMPING LOCAL SHOPS IN INDIA?
WHERE’S OUR GOVERNMENT?
Back in the days where .comboom didn't cross our country, retailers were the
prime rulers of the market and consumer market was only limited to hyperlocal
marketing, everything was simple and sane, until the TV shopping line opened up.
Yes that's where all the drama came along. The strategy to uplift the materialistic
greed of middle class society through advertising and discount offers made people
buy things they didn't feel the need to buy in the first place. The .com boom
swayed the market setup by the TV shopping marts and giants like Flipkart and
Snap deal made their dominating entry to Indian market and consumed more than
20% of the total B2C business, seeing growth of some of these web pioneers the
startup boom followed and everything, entirely everything was sold or advertised
online. Whereas this was seen as a positive growth from youth of India, 3 college
students from Chennai contemplated its cons. they started with a simple peer to
peer online delivery site with 2 small clothing shops. As they began to start they
failed miserably, but these shops were renowned and trusted from nearby people,
but as they entered the market they were revealed to the dark side of the startup
system which they were going to be a part of and that answered their failure's
reason. They realized that the price of products which are provided by the e-
commerce giants and the discounts offered by the service apps were unparalleled
to that of any retail store or service shops. with this and the amount invested on
advertising of these products through several foreign banks it has literally become
a one-sided war for the miserably loosing newbie startups, and thus even after
getting funded lots and lots of these startups close their doors or referred to as
imitators. With this in mind the 3 young entrepreneurs knew they have entered the
chakravyuh of Mahabharata.But this time they changed from their domain and
tried to change the whole e-commerce market instead and redeem the retailers
which were lost to e-commerce but this needed a relatively bigger seed capital and
networking with high end brands. As the hunt for investor began they realized
accelerators have taken over the internet pioneering startups and as sheep they too
enrolled in one amongst hundreds. But with each time they sat back and waited the
giants started to collaborate and started suppressingthe newbie startups. With the
fear to be diminished many of these newbies were bought too and many who
struggled craved for more investors. All these things were so intimidating for the
2. unhatched startups that the guys started to lose their faith on accelerators and
started to approachVCs directly. But what they saw as a revolutionizing social
marketing site, VCs saw it as merely a hyperlocal marketing aggregator. Come as
it may, still the hyperlocal marketing target audiencewas estimated around 334
million $ in India in 2016. But as many e-commerce startups have drowned their
precious thin papers, they hesitated to even consider their proposal. And the
reasons they delivered were horrendous, like one of the high end advertising
company's VP said to them after reading their proposal(if at all he has): “this lacks
the guaranteeon returns of the invested capital and can be risk for me”, but my
question is, is there any business in this entire world which can guarantee a profit
repeatedly? Our esteemed prime minister Mr. Narendra Modi Ji started the MAKE
IN INDIA program the same year their quest was on going. With rejection from
VCs and distrust on accelerator programs, they turned their heads towards this
opportunity as their start up could not only help India's retailers but also degrade
the foreign e-commerce site's dominance over Indian startups. But their prayers
remained unanswered, as the program was specifically for manufacturing and
trading sector. But the drop in growth of retailer industry doesn'tseem to worry the
Indian government somehow, as the growth of .combusiness is smartly creaming
out the profits from India and the foreign banks backing these companies are piling
up their profits day by day. As the total retailer market of India is 2nd highest in
world, witha whopping 600billion $, the failurerate of their startup was
grievinglyless, and thus with the hope that someday they'd change the e-commerce
system with help of Indian government they're still struggling, struggling to
survive and waiting to thrive. like many other in our entrepreneurial community,
even they began with a small dream, but the helplessness of retailers have put a
responsibility on their shoulders, responsibility for their young minds to help them
change their situation. And so with faith in their stars and passionin their hearts,
they're trying, cause that's the only word that can truly describe the word
entrepreneurs.
