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It's a month since eBay India has launched its mobile commerce services. But, “it's more like a customer preview right now,” says Mr B. Muralikrishnan, Senior Director, Marketing and Product Management, eBay India.
The big roll out will be sometime in May end or June, he says, when the next version of the specially optimised site for mobile phones will be up. “That's when we will be actively pushing it,” he says. “Right now, we are not really marketing our mcommerce initiative – just relying on word of mouth,” he adds.
Although the company believes mobile commerce will totally redefine shopping — globally, eBay has clocked $2 billion in mcommerce sales in 2010 — Mr Muralikrishnan feels that the Indian market will gain traction only in 2013 or so.
“2012 will be the year when mobile commerce will take root, and 2013 will be the year when transaction velocity in India will achieve the global scale,” he says. So, why the launch now? Since this is the year 3G networks are being rolled out and smartphone sales are picking up, it prompted us to launch, he replies.
To start accessing eBay through their mobile phones, users have to download a mobile Web application (this is designed to be compatible on almost all smartphones).
Currently, globally, he says, every second a transaction happens on eBay's mcommerce site. According to him, 190 countries are using mcommerce, and 30 million downloads of eBay's mobile Web applications across all smartphone platforms have happened. Of these, iPhone alone has accounted for 15 million downloads. “We found that iPhone users are very savvy when it comes to mobile commerce,” says Mr Muralikrishnan.
No auctions on the phone
At the moment, on eBay India's mcommerce site only fixed listings are available. There are no auctions and neither are used products listed. In fact, only 40 per cent of the listings online are shown on the mobile platform. “We wanted to keep it simple on the mobile space,” says Mr Muralikrishnan. Another new service that eBay India has started in February is the SMS check, whereby users can search and locate the cheapest listings of any products on eBAy India.
Users have to type in the word ‘ebay' followed by the product name and send an SMS to 567678. Within seconds, the company sends back the two cheapest listings of the product with the item code. “Even if you are buying a product offline, this helps consumers to make an informed decision,” says Mr Muralikrishnan.
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