Snapdeal, Flipkart learn from Amazon as ecommerce focus shifts in India

Customer service is the name of the game. Photo credit: audio-luci-store.

For years now, ecommerce’s bloody fight in India has been a story that revolved around gross merchandise value (GMV), the number of sellers, and the amount of stuff each website listed on their platforms.

Flipkart and Snapdeal, the two biggest Indian ecommerce sites, have had their own conflicts as they one-upped each other on GMV targets and otherwise, while dropping the ball on customer care.

GMV is the metric ecommerce companies use to count the total value of goods sold.

While Flipkart saw a massive pushback from customers during its first mega sale, Snapdeal made headlines when it delivered a bar of soap, or wood blocks, instead of the smartphones shoppers ordered.

For long used to touting GMV numbers with vehement chest thumping as they claimed leading market positions, the heavyweights of Indian ecommerce have suddenly shifted their dialogue to other metrics, and industry watchers think late entrant Amazon is the reason why.

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Flipkart launched in India in 2007, and Snapdeal in 2010. Amazon came into the country in 2013.

Flipkart CEO Binny Bansal (left), and Sachin Bansal.

“When you study the reason for Amazon’s success across the globe, it is based on customer service. They do everything for the customer. I think Indian players are finally realizing that they cannot keep talking about GMVs over and over, they need to talk about the other things,” Ashish Jhalani, founder of ecommerce research firm Etailing India, told Tech in Asia.

In an interview published in the Mint newspaper on Tuesday, Flipkart CEO Binny Bansal said the company was planning to focus more on customer loyalty, and less on GMVs – a metric that was considered the holy grail of all ecommerce growth till now.

Amazon’s experience is good for us and the market, Snapdeal said.

Binny Bansal, who founded Flipkart along with Sachin Bansal, took over as CEO in January. The two are not related.

The Amazon threat