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Mala Kothari, a 26-year-old software engineer, wanted to buy a book online and get the cheapest deal. She logged on to an ‘online price aggregator’ that gave her a comparison of all the Web sites such as Flipkart, Infibeam, and Snapdeal offering the book on sale.
Called online price comparison aggregators, these Web sites are slowly making inroads into the booming e-commerce industry. The total e-commerce market in India is estimated at $10 billion and is growing at 70 per cent year-on-year, according to Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI).
At present, about half a dozen Web sites in India that offer such retail price comparison. “If people are willing to buy tickets from online ticket aggregators, then why not buy through an online price comparison aggregator,” said Mr Sitakanta Ray, Co-Founder, MySmartPrice.com, an online price aggregator founded in late 2010.
“We have seen a pick-up in the number of users on MySmartPrice.com . We used to have about 20,000 users a day, but now almost one lakh people visit our Web site,” added Mr Ray. Web sites such as Junglee.com and Comparethebazaar.com also offer price comparisons.
The latest entrant to this market is Compareraja.com , an Indianised version of the UK online price aggregator Voucherking.com . “We have similar platforms in the UK and other European markets and we felt it was a good time to launch it in India,” said Mr Rohit Chugh, Founder and CEO, Compareraja.com . They expect the comparison shopping space to become $230 million by 2016.
Online retail aggregators generate revenues from advertisements as well as a percentage of the net sales from the tie-ups with e-retailers (traffic-based). With more competition, Web sites such as these are focussing on two aspects — marketing and technology. While Compareraja.com plans to ramp up marketing operations by hiring more people, MySmartPrice.com plans to strengthen its technological operations.
“We also plan to increase tie-ups with online stores. At present, we have tie-ups with 20 stores, which will increase to 40 in the next three months,” said Mr Ray from MySmartPrice.com . There is interest from private equity investors as well. Recently, Helion Venture Partners and Accel Partners invested Rs 2 crore in this Hyderabad-based start-up.
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