This year, India will overtake China to become the world’s most populous country. Such a large addressable market has been enticing for many of the world’s biggest companies, especially when many of these companies lost out to local incumbents in China. In the retail space, some of the world’s biggest retailers have been competing to win India’s growing eCommerce market.
In one corner has been Amazon. The American eCommerce giant launched its first shopping website in India in 2013 and Prime Memberships in 2016. In the other corner is Flipkart, the locally grown startup founded by two ex-Amazon employees in 2007.
These two companies have been going head-to-head for the past decade to win market share in India. Then, in 2018, Flipkart got a big boost after being acquired by Walmart for $21 billion. Now the two American retail giants are battling it out for the world’s most populous market.
This article from Rest of World tells the story of Flipkart and their battle with Amazon. India is one of the hardest countries to manage logistically. Many more established western brands break up India into a lot of smaller regions. For example, Unilever’s Winning in Many Indias strategy sees it break up the country into 15 smaller regional clusters.
At the same time, the opportunity is huge. In India, eCommerce still only accounts for a single-digit percentage of the retail market, compared to 25% in China and 14% in the United States. As more and more Indian consumers get smartphones and become online shoppers, Amazon and Walmart are hoping that the difficulties in managing Indian operations is worth it for the hundreds of millions of extra users.
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