Flipkart will shut down eBay.in, one of India’s oldest e-commerce site. According to the Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Chief Executive of Flipkart, it will be launching a new platform to sell refurbished goods.
“Based on our learnings at eBay.in, we have built a brand new value platform launching with refurbished goods — a large market which is predominantly unorganised. With Flipkart’s customer base and F1 Info Solutions & Services in our group portfolio, I believe that we can solve the key barriers to refurbished — trust & convenience — at scale.”, said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, in an email to employees.
Flipkart will be stopping all transactions on eBay.in on 14 August 2018, as it transitions to its new platform. This new platform will be catering to a different target audience. It will be using its learnings from eBay.in to provide a more enhanced experience to its users, along with ensuring that eBay users migrate to the new platform.
eBay had entered the Indian market way back in 2004 and its operations began after the acquisition of Bazee.com. It struggled to establish itself in the Indian market amongst the e-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon. Other Indian websites catering to the same audience as eBay including Olx, and Quikr made it even harder for eBay to penetrate the market.
eBay’s India operation was later acquired by Flipkart in 2017. Flipkart had raised $1.4 billion in 2017 in a funding round that saw participation from the likes of Microsoft, Tencent, and eBay. eBay later received another $220 million worth shares in Flipkart after it sold its India operation to Flipkart.
In May 2018, eBay had said it was ending its strategic partnership with the Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart and it will be launching eBay India with a differentiated offering to focus on cross-border trade.
“Following the close of the transaction, we also will be ending our current strategic relationship with Flipkart, which includes unwinding our commercial agreements with Flipkart and terminating Flipkart’s license to use the eBay.in brand,” eBay had said in a statement earlier.