NEW DELHI – EBay Inc is stepping up investment in India to boost its share of a market dominated by domestic players such as Flipkart and fend off encroachment from arch-rival Amazon.com. The e-commerce company dipped a toe into the market seven years ago and stuck with a cautious approach, even as local upstarts made splashy grabs for business in a tiny but growing market.
“The talks of us having missed the bus are exaggerated,” Muralikrishnan B, country manager for Silicon Valley-based eBay told Reuters in an interview in Mumbai. “Most of the new business models are just waiting to implode. We have chosen the cautious route, unlike a lot of Indian businesses who are blindly investing money without having an eye on sustainability or profitability.”
The company hopes to bring its online payments business PayPal into India soon, which would help draw more online shoppers.
EBay India clocks six transactions per minute, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India. By comparison, Flipkart, founded by two former Amazon employees in 2007, sells 20 items per minute.
Muralikrishnan, 36, joined eBay shortly after its entry into India.
