The Hindu Business Line : `E-commerce proves a big boon for entrepreneurs'

Did you know there's a market for Ramayana in Zambia? Neither did Mr Chinmay Tripathi, seller of religious books online, till a customer from that country placed an order for one of his products on his account on an online shopping portal.

Thanks to distances being bridged by e-commerce, the value of transactions across cyber space in India is estimated at Rs 1,180 crore in 2004-05, and is projected to hit Rs 2,300 crore in 2006-07, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

The Internet is a big boon for new age entrepreneurs as this saves them the initial investment in a store and the subsequent management costs. Mr Tripathi is only a part-time programmer, who is busy with his full time business of managing his 120-plus registered accounts in shopping portals worldwide. He sells 200 to 300 religious books a month to customers in places ranging from Haridwar to Djakarta.

A few thousand of eBay's two million users in India make their living through this Web site, according to a spokesperson of eBay. Similarly, on Rediff.com's shopping portal, the business focus of 70-80 per cent of the company's total base of e-commerce partners is purely online, according to Mr Jasmeet Singh, Vice President - Product Marketing, Rediff.com. Mr Singh said e-commerce has grown positively in the last two years. He said there has been an increasing demand for convenience-driven services such as purchase of railway and airline tickets.

Another driving factor is the reduced cost of the products purchased online. The customer can save up to 30 per cent, said Mr Ambesh Khanna, who, along with Ms Reena Khanna, sells diamonds on ebay on a full-time basis. This is a because of the low day-to-day running costs for the seller. "We buy the diamonds locally (The Khannas are based in Delhi), and sell it through the Internet throughout India and also worldwide to countries like the US, Germany and Australia," said Mr Khanna. He said they have sold jewellery priced from Rs 5,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh online, generating revenues of about Rs 4 lakh a month.

E-commerce also serves as a starting point for businesses. Mr Bomi Rupa, as a student in the US in 2003, saw in the Internet an opportunity to import low-end laptops from the US and sell it in India to make extra pocket money. "A laptop that goes for Rs 20,000 in the US would easily go for Rs 35,000 over here, so even including the 14 per cent import duty, the margins were good," he said.

Today, Mr Rupa owns Hightechsolutionss, a consumer electronics store in Mumbai that sells laptops, and is looking to expand his business. Unwilling to abandon his starting point, he still sells laptops on ebay, but only high-end laptops, that would fetch him Rs 80,000 to Rs 90,000.

Mr Singh of Rediff said that consumer electronics, which includes mobile phones, audio-video systems and digital cameras, is a large category, as is white goods, while traditional categories such as gifts, apparel, flowers and books continue to grow. He added that premium branded apparel for both men and women is also growing.

To make it easier for these individual sellers and SME entrepreneurs, ebay offers a service called `eshops', where the seller can get his own url, logo and content, and that link will display only that seller's products, according to the company.

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