SoftBank infuses Rs 1,675 crore in Ola Cabs; fresh funds to help Bengaluru co take on rival Uber

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Japanese investor SoftBank has pumped in about Rs 1,675 crore in fresh funding in Indian transportation startup Ola to give it more muscle to take American rival Uber head-on.

SoftBank subsidiary SIMI Pacific Pte picked 12,97,945 shares valued at Rs 10 at a premium of Rs 12,895 in ANI Technologies — which runs Ola — filings with the Registrar of Companies showed.

Reuters

The allotment of shares was done in November last year, it added.

The latest funding, however, is believed to have come at a lower valuation.

According to sources, the move comes at a time when Softbank is working on selling Snapdeal, an e-commerce platform it invested heavily in India, to larger rival Flipkart.

The Bengaluru-based firm was aggressively looking at raising funds to compete with Uber, the world’s most valuable start-up. After selling its Chinese business to Didi last year, Uber has now set sights on India making it one of its top priorities.

Though Indian Internet companies have seen a boom in user base, their valuations have come down as investors are now focusing on path to profitability and building a sustainable business model. Flush with private equity and venture capitalist money, many start-ups continue to have high burn rate that has been a concern for investors.

Earlier this week, India’s largest e-commerce firm Flipkart raised $1.4 billion from Tencent, eBay and Microsoft in a round that saw its valuation fall from $15 billion to $11.6 billion now.

Source: http://www.firstpost.com/business/softbank-infuses-rs-1675-crore-in-ola-cabs-fresh-funds-to-help-bengaluru-co-take-on-rival-uber-3383644.html

Amazon India sees 250% annual growth in sellers

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US-based Amazon on Friday said it had witnessed a 250 per cent year-on-year growth in bringing new sellers on board, as it looks to tap into the booming e-commerce market in India.

The company, which is making multi-billion dollar investments in India, has about 85,000 sellers on board.

“We started with 100 sellers three years ago and now we have about 85,000 sellers growing at 250 per cent year-on-year and adding nearly 90,000 products a day,” an Amazon India spokesperson stated.

Amazon, which competes with the likes of Flipkart and Snapdeal, has cut its commissions by 25-30 per cent across categories such as mobile phones, PCs, electronic devices and personal care appliances.

“We think these revised rates can significantly help sellers to perform even better and succeed in their business. In addition, we continue to innovate and offer best in class services such as Fulfilment by Amazon, Easy Ship, Seller Flex, etc, to help them with fulfilment/logistics, so that they can focus on their business,” the Amazon spokesperson said.

Flipkart, on the contrary, had recently increased its commissions across key segments and asked sellers to bear the costs of logistics in case of returns.

Recently, Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos had said the company will invest $3 billion in India. This is in addition to the American e-commerce giant’s $2-billion infusion in 2014, taking its total investments here to over $5 billion.

The funds will be channelled towards enhancing customer and seller experience, Amazon India managing director Amit Agarwal had told PTI.

“India is a key market for Amazon and we will work towards continuing to reduce operating costs for sellers backed by good logistics and fulfilment capabilities,” he had added.

 

Source: http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/amazon-india-sees-250-annual-growth-in-sellers-116061700852_1.html

Japanese investors keen on India’s infra growth story: Arun Jaitley

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TOKYO: Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and a number of investors here have shown keen interest in investing in India’s “infrastructure growth story”, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said today as he kicked off his 6-day visit to Japan aimed at attracting investments from Asia’s second biggest economy.

After a meeting with Jaitley, SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son said he is also interested in Internet companies as well as solar energy sector, where he has already announced $20 billion investment through a joint venture.

“There are people who want to participate in infrastructure growth story. For example, at the SoftBank meeting we just had, they are looking at one of the biggest investments in solar power already,” Jaitley said after meeting Son.

“There are people who want to participate in infrastructure growth story. For example, at the SoftBank meeting we just had, they are looking at one of the biggest investments in solar power already,” Jaitley said after meeting Son.

In June last year, SoftBank announced that the group was forming a joint venture with Bharti Enterprises and Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group to invest about $20 billion in renewable energy in India. The JV would aim to generate 20 gigawatts of electricity.

“They have made considerable headway and have identified location. It will probably be one of the largest investment in those areas,” Jaitley said.

The Japanese telecom and Internet giant has made a string of tech investments in India, amounting to $2 billion in the past two year. SoftBank is looking at accelerating the pace of investments in the future.

“India has a great future… We are interested in investing for Internet companies, also for solar energy. We would make a strong commitment,” Son said.

He had previously said that India’s market is poised for massive growth, making it an important destination for investors.

SoftBank’s investments in the past two years include $627 million in online-retailing marketplace Snapdeal and leading a $210 million funding round in taxi-hailing app Ola Cabs.

It paid $200 million for a 35 per cent stake in InMobi, an Indian mobile-advertising network, starting in 2011.

SoftBank also has a JV with Bharti Group, Bharti SoftBank, the investments of which include the mobile application Hike Messenger. Its other investments include real-estate website Housing.com, hotel-booking app Oyo Rooms and Grofers.

Son had previously predicted that India’s e-commerce industry would become a $500 billion business in the next 10 years.

SoftBank, which owns one of Japan’s biggest mobile carriers and a controlling stake in US-based Sprint Corp, has been moving quickly to expand its Internet and media holdings.

As the largest shareholder in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, the Chinese e-commerce company, SoftBank has ample resources to deploy for acquisitions.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/52491788.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Amazon sets the pace for e-commerce in India

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Seattle-based e-commerce giant Amazon should be happy that even before it turns three in India on June 5, the company has emerged a leader in this market. Before rivals can protest, we are not talking numbers yet. The American player has won the first round simply because it has successfully pushed competition to change the narrative and metrics of the online play.

Earlier this week, the almost nine-year-old poster boy of Indian ecommerce, Flipkart, announced in three separate interviews that customer satisfaction would be its mantra from now on. GMV or gross merchandise value of goods sold on the platform, till now the benchmark for success, will be kept aside, said Binny Bansal, who became CEO of Flipkart in January. Not too long ago, Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl had the same to say about shedding the GMV goalpost.

In the process, both Flipkart and Snapdeal have endorsed what the American e-commerce major has always maintained and indirectly acknowledged Amazon’s heavyweight presence in this market.

Here’s how the customer has always been the central point for Amazon. When asked about the next round of investment coming into India and whether the figure would be higher than the $2 billion announced in 2014, the company’s India head, Amit Agarwal, had said in December 2015: “All I can say is that we will not be held back for investments…. We don’t manage to a number but to the customer’s expectation.” Also, GMV was never a benchmark that this company referred to, unlike its rivals.

The focus on customer flows from the top. In September 2014, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had told this newspaper, ”I stay heads down, focused. I encourage these guys (the India team) to not pay attention to a bunch of noise, and rather stay focused on the customer experience, figure out how to get products to customers faster with more reliability, earn trust with customers. The rest will take care of itself.”

In fact, the Bansals of Flipkart have known the napkin sketch of flywheel (with customer at the centre) drawn by Bezos some 17 years ago only too well: the two IITians had worked at Amazon in the US before starting their own venture in 2007.

As for numbers, estimates show that Amazon’s growth in India was 250 per cent in 2015 compared to the previous year. This year, the growth has been around 150 per cent. The number of active sellers on the platform is pegged at 85,000 and industry reports have shown that its website is top of the list in e-commerce. The company does not offer separate customer data for different geographies, but it has a total global user base of 300 million plus.

Picking and choosing
Comparisons with Flipkart and Snapdeal are tough. But in a cat and mouse chase, both Amazon and Flipkart or their investors have been dishing out data from time to time, citing analytics firms. In December, two sets of data came out. One was from Bezos in an email to customers. “Just two and a half years from our launch, Amazon.in has become the most visited e-commerce site in India,” Bezos wrote. He cited data analytics firm ComScore to say Amazon was leading with more than 30 million monthly unique visitors as of October 2015. Flipkart was at 27 million while Snapdeal was at 20 million. These numbers reflected unique visitors to e-commerce sites through desktop or laptop, rather than through mobile apps.

In the same month, Naspers, a South African Internet company, said Flipkart, along with Myntra, had over 50 million monthly active users on its smartphone app, three times larger than those on Snapdeal and Amazon during the September 2015 quarter. Naspers owns 17.4 per cent in Flipkart.

If number of visitors is what Amazon and Flipkart cite to claim leadership position, Snapdeal is peddling transaction numbers for the top slot. Snapdeal co-founder and COO Rohit Bansal said in February that the company has 1 million transacting users on the platform (Snapdeal, Freecharge and Shopo combined), and the number is higher than Amazon and Flipkart put together. Snapdeal aims to grow the transacting user number to 20 million by 2020.

There have been shipment comparisons too. Based on interaction with an unnamed logistic firm, a recent media report said that Amazon was the only e-commerce firm to have grown in shipment share from a year ago. While Amazon’s shipment share is said to have grown to 21-24 per cent from 19 per cent earlier, Flipkart’s share dropped from 43 per cent to 37 per cent and Snapdeal’s from 19 per cent to 14-15 per cent. These numbers could not be verified independently.

Number of sellers is another way of comparing the strength of a player. Against Amazon’s active 85,000, Flipkart has more than 100,000 and Snapdeal around 250,000.

The measure of success
Of late, companies have even started measuring the average delivery time as a benchmark in e-commerce. A recent study by PwC put Snapdeal ahead of Amazon and Flipkart in that measure.

Till recently, when the industry referred to GMV as the only solid currency, Flipkart was an undisputed leader at around $10 billion of total sales, followed by Snapdeal at $4 billion and Amazon at $2 billion as of 2015 estimates. One of the analysts that this newspaper spoke to projected the 2017 GMV at $12 billion for Flipkart, $9 billion for Snapdeal and $6.3 billion for Amazon. But according to him, the math could change as it was possible for Amazon to cross Snapdeal’s GMV while moving closer to Flipkart, depending on how the three played out the GMV-versus-profitability game.

A report published by Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in May 2015 placed Flipkart on top with 43 per cent market share, followed by Snapdeal at 30 per cent and Amazon at 18 per cent.

One year later, things have moved on. As reported by this paper, in the next 12 to 18 months, Amazon has the potential to be at the top of the pack, executives at three prominent international analyst firms say. If Flipkart and Snapdeal focus more on getting profits, shifting their attention from GMV, Amazon could race ahead faster, they said.

Stumbling blocks
But there are challenges on the way. The riders that came with the recent guidelines allowing 100 per cent FDI in online marketplace companies are among the hurdles. While liberalising e-commerce, the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion has introduced conditions to ensure that platform owners do not turn sellers. Thus, sales cannot exceed 25 per cent for any vendor, marketplace players or their group companies cannot sell, guarantee and warranty must be the sole responsibilities of the sellers, and platform owners cannot influence pricing of products so that there’s a level playing field.

In fact, Amazon highlighted the regulatory risks in its India business, citing the latest e-commerce guidelines, in its filings to the US Securities & Exchange Commission.

Apart from the risk of sellers not being able to offer products at low prices on Amazon, as it may be interpreted as ”influencing pricing”, its worry is also Cloudtail, the most prominent vendor on the platform. Cloudtail, a joint venture of Amazon with Catamaran Ventures, promoted by Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy, must reduce its sale to adhere with the latest Indian policy.

Even so, analysts believe that Amazon stands a better chance than the rest to be a long-term leader in e-commerce in India, primarily because of its war-chest. Amazon is a $100-billion conglomerate and it does have an open cheque book for India.

Source: http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/amazon-sets-the-pace-for-e-commerce-in-india-116052601474_1.html

E-commerce sees major money inflow

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It is not only Uber, the American taxi-hailing app, that is going all guns blazing in India with massive investment plans. Its biggest competitor, Bengaluru-based Ola, as well as e-commerce entities Flipkart and Amazon, are all planning to pump in big money to stay ahead, even in a scenario when investors are not as ready as earlier in opening their purse-strings.

Uber India has readied itself for another $500 million (Rs 3,300 crore) investment in the next three months, reports suggest. The app service had only nine months earlier committed $1 billion (Rs 6,600 crore) in India. Uber could not be reached for a comment.

For foreign giants such as Amazon, Uber and Alibaba, this country is a big market they all want to capture. Experts believe this is a trend which will continue, as a global economic slowdown will push a chunk of new investments towards India.

“We can clearly see a slowdown in overseas markets, while India is still managing annual growth of seven to eight per cent. So, companies such as Uber, Amazon and Alibaba want to bet big on India. While Amazon was not able to make a dent in China and Alibaba in Europe, they do not want to lose out on India. We will see this trend through the year,” says Amarjeet Singh, partner – tax, KPMG in India.

Ola, rival of Uber in the same segment, is on track to invest a chunk of its $1.3 billion (Rs 8,650 crore) capital raised so far. The firm recently announced it would invest Rs 200 crore in the Delhi-National Capital Region area over the next six months, “towards innovative green fuel technology, leasing of CNG cars and strengthening the system to catalyse greater CNG adoption in the region”, Rahul Maroli, its vice-president for strategic supply initiatives had said.

According to sources, Ola will further make strategic investments in all metro cities, as well as in Tier-II and Tier-III towns. “The company plans to add at least another 550,000 vehicles by the end of this year,” said one. Ola has at least 350,000 cabs and 80,000 auto rickshaws on its platform across 102 cities in the country.

American e-commerce major Amazon had said in October 2014 it was investing $2 billion (Rs 13,200 crore) in India. Later, its executives said the group had an open chequebook for the market. In February, it bought Noida-based payments services provider Emvantage, its first acquisition. This is aimed to help Amazon accelerate the development of payment solutions for customers.

As for Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, it already has a foothold in Indian e-commerce through its investments. The group is majority stakeholder in One97Communications, owner of mobile payments giant Paytm. Also, online marketplace major Snapdeal raised $500 million (Rs 3,300 crore) from a group of entities last year which included Alibaba.

The Chinese company now plans to directly enter India.

“We plan to enter the e-commerce business in India in 2016,” recently said J Michael Evans, group president. “We have been exploring very carefully the opportunity in this country, which we think is very exciting against the backdrop of (the) Digital India (programme of the government).”

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart had, in March, infused Rs 338 crore into its online fashion store, Myntra, documents filed with the registrar of companies stated. Flipkart has so far raised $3 billion (nearly Rs 20,000 crore).

Source: http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/e-commerce-sees-major-money-inflow-116032800986_1.html

CBEC for voluntary code for e-retailers to curb illicit trade

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Expressing concern over sale of fake products on e-commerce platform, CEBC today said it is considering putting in place a voluntary code of practice for e-retailers to curb illicit trade.
“New challenges are emerging for customs. E-commerce is one such major area of vulnerability. E-commerce in India provides an unparalleled platform for sellers of both genuine and counterfeit products. So, we are looking at possibility of introducing voluntary code of practice for e-retailers,” Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) Chairman Najib Shah said at an event organised by Ficci here.
The easy concealment of identity encourages sale of counterfeit products on the e-commerce platform. At times, intermediaries are denied judicial protection in the absence of strong law, he said.
To address the challenges posed by e-commerce trade, Shah said CBEC will at a seminar next month discuss with stakeholders the possibility of introducing ‘voluntary code of practice’ for e-retailers to fight illicit trade.
Stating that any smuggling and counterfeit activities is a matter of great concern to the government, the CBEC chief said, “This game is done at the cost of the honest tax payers. Though it results in financial gain to the person infringing the law but it is a financial loss to the exchequer.”
Shah also emphasised on the intellectual property rights and called for structured interaction between the customs and stakeholders on this issue.
The latest report, ‘Emerging challenges to legitimate business in the border-less world’, prepared by tax and advisory firm Grant Thornton and industry body Ficci, also noted that online marketplaces have become a “preferred hub for illicit operations” owing to their wider reach and ease of access.
Prominent players including Alibaba, Amazon and SnapDeal, etc have been at the receiving end of imitation products offered by third parties not connected to the brand owner, the report said and suggested e-retailers to put in place an holistic anti-counterfeit policy.
That apart, the report also pitched for a separate e- commerce law in the country to check illicit trade.
“In the absence of a specific e-commerce legislature in India and other laws including the Information Technology Act, Indian Companies Act, Companies Act 2013, Intellectual property, laws in copyrights and trademark etc, there are certain grey areas. Thus, there is a need for a separate e- commerce law in the country,” the report said.
The e-commerce regulations have a long way to go in India and inching closely towards this journey is the recent proposal of the Consumer Affairs Ministry to bring e-commerce businesses under the purview of multiple government agencies, the report added.
The report was released here by Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan. (PTI)

Source: http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/cbec-for-voluntary-code-for-e-retailers-to-curb-illicit-trade/