Google's Great Online Shopping Festival hits Singapore

Taking place on February 2 to 4, the Cyber Monday-style event lets global brands such as Airbnb and Adidas take advantage of the city-state's high broadband penetration.

Google is expanding its Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) from India to the city-state of Singapore. Like cyber monday or singles day in  china, the Google-led initiative gets companies to offer discounts for products and services ahead of the retail-friendly Chinese New Year, on February 2 to 4.

The online sale, which started in India in 2012, will feature recognisable global apparel brands such as Adidas and Uniqlo alongside online travel services such as Agoda, Airbnb and Hotels.com.

One of the reasons Singapore was chosen as the second venue for GOSF, Google said, was due to research indicating that more than 49 percent of Singaporean Internet users use their phones for product information, with 12 percent of them completing purchases. This compares favorably to highly connected countries such as Japan, at 24 percent and 5 percent respectively

Yureka-yureka sold 10,000 phones in 3 sec

            Micromax's fully-owned subsidiary Yu Televentures has Thursday sold 10,000 Yureka smartphones on Amazon in just 3 seconds, for its third online sale after launching the Rs 8,999 device last month.

            In the month of February, YU is looking at ramping up the availability of the device and will put almost double the amount of devices for sale, the company said in a statement. The device will go on sale every Thursday at 2pm, registrations for which will begin a week prior on the the dual-SIM smartphone, Yureka, is amongst the cheapest LTE devices in the country. It runs Cyanogen's operating system, bears a 5.5-inch HD (720x1280 pixels) IPS display with Gorilla Glass 3.

            The smartphone runs on octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor, has a 13-megapixel Sony rear camera and a front-facing 5-megapixel camera with 16GB of inbuilt storage expandable up to 32GB, powered by a 2500 mAh battery.

Growth of Online Shopping in the world

                  Throughout the world online buying has grown exponentially. The money Australians spend online is projected to increase by about $10 billion within the next five years. Consumers may still be concerned about the security of online shopping, but more and more of them are prepared to buy on the web. Faster delivery, easier return policies, and many sites offering free shipping have also increased the desirability of online buying. IBIS World research forecasts an 8.6% per year increase in online revenues over the next five years.

                  In South Africa, 51% of individuals with internet access shop online. In Kenya, 18-24% make online purchases. In Nigeria approximately 28% of the population has internet access according to ITU figures. The number of mobile cell phone subscriptions has topped 87 million. A new group of internet developers are eager to increase buying options by providing discounted deals on a wide range of products and services. Analysts indicate that a lack of convenient and reliable electronic payment services for online shoppers is a major problem confronted throughout Africa.

                      In the U.S., Forrester Research shows that $248.7 billion online sales are expected by 2014. A compounded growth of 10% is forecast for the next five years. In Western Europe sales are expected to reach 14 billion euros ($155.7 billion), a growth of 11% percent annually. Apparel, computers and consumer electronics will continue to be dominant purchases; these three areas make up 40% of the current online sales which won't change in the near future.

                    Online sales continue to be mostly small-ticket items. The high-ticket products lag far behind by comparison. On average, retailers that have both a physical (store) and online presence have reported an average of 23% growth. Online only retailers (including catalogue sales) however have seen only 9% yearly growth. Online shoppers are beginning to think that the best deals are available online (71%) and that they get better prices there (66%).

                     The internet is only going to become more popular as time goes by and purchasers worldwide become more comfortable about the security and on-time delivery of their purchases. This is the one area of merchandising that continues to have a positive outlook far into the future.

Fashion trend cues from small screen!!!

Indian e-commerce industry has been growing at a scorching rate during the last few years with hundreds of million dollars being invested by venture capital funds in the sector. E-commerce has been around in India for more than a decade but has become main stream only in the last few years.

            Online shoppers have now graduated from buying only Books/Electronics to buying Clothes, Shoes and Accessories. In fact, as per a recent study by Accel Partners, Fashion category recorded highest number of transactions in 2013. As per this study, Fashion is expected to grow by 400% in next three years.Baggout.com conducted a survey amongst its users to dig deeper into this trend and the survey produced some deep insights into the underlying reasons as well as possible risks to this growth story.

Main findings from the survey are –

I.        Flipkart and Snapdeal are the best rated retailers and are ahead of vertical sites including Myntra and Jabong

II.        Clothes and Footwear are the two most popular categories in Fashion

III.        There are a number of fundamental reasons leading to growth in online Fashion sales including Ease of shopping from home, low prices, discounts and prolific Product collection available online

IV.        50% respondents buy Fashion products (Clothes, Shoes, Accessories) online at least once a month while 31% buy rarely or never buy online

V.        However, the industry needs to still solve a few problems so that this growth story does not get derailed. The biggest impediment to buying online is the inability to check for fitting which discourages a lot of people from buying online in spite of the liberal return policies of online retailers. The other big problem is the lack of touch and feel.

VI.        Online buyers decide to buy from a retailer based on a number of factors including Product Collection available and Pricing on the retailer’s website

‘Republic Day Parade’ on Amazon India live and exclusive!!

        Amazon India has announced their Republic Day sales discounts on their site starting January 23 till January 26.The deals are updated every time the stocks are over and its going to be an exciting weekend for online shoppers as their sponsors like HDFC, Ola, Saavn, Freecharge, etc are also there to lure buyers with discounts and special limited period offers.

Some of the exciting discounts available currently are:

         Micromax canvas (33% off), laptops (33%),TV and  home entertainment ( minimum of 20%), Ray-Ban Aviators (35% off) ,The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years ( 64% off).

RSS wants online shopping banned in Maharashtra

   Swadeshi Jaagran Manch leader Mr Gachke has iterated the need to ban ecommerce business in Maharashtra amidst PM’s call for foreign investment in India. The leader is furious over the fact that 80% of the stakeholders of ecommerce players in India are foreigners and that they haven’t come under the ambit of taxation as of now.

                              With the ecommerce business in India rising at a compounded rate of 35% each year, it’s estimated that the revenue generated by 2020 would easily cross the $100 billion mark. In a recent study conducted on the pattern of online shopping in India it was found that 4 crore Indians had purchased something via online shopping.

Xiaomi wonder continues

The Chinese tech giant Xiaomi had produced wonders in Indian market in a couple of month’s time and has become world’s 4rth in mobile phone sales. The latest news is that Xiaomi has sold 90k units during its sales on 19th January  via flipkart - 30K units of Redmi 1Sand 60k Redmi Note 4G smartphone. The entry level phone, Redmi 1S is priced at INR 5999 while Redmi Note 4G has a price tag of INR 9999.

               The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G is a 4G enabled phablet that runs on Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor and has 720p resolution. The phone also boast of a 13 MP master camera. Redmi 1S is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor and has 1GB RAM.