ecommerce

Amazon has finally entered India by launching Amazon.in. While they've had a presence here for a while and even operated Junglee.com to test the waters, this is a momentous step and hopefully a sign of better times to come. However, just like Flipkart has done in the last few months, Amazon too is tiptoeing around Indian government FDI regulations on multi-brand retail by not positioning itself as a seller. It is, instead, a marketplace where it allows multi-sellers to, er, sell multi-brands.

Anyone who has considered offering a payment gateway in India is probably (painfully) familiar with Transecute. The firm is a sister concern of Directi, a domain registrar and parent company of, amongst others, the webhoster, Bigrock. It now appears that Directi is phasing out support for Transecute in favour of a new service, Pay.pw.

China's e-commerce portal Taobao reports that it conducted USD 3 Billion worth of business in 24 hours on Singles' Day. The store is owned by the Alibaba Group, a subsidiary of which—alibaba.com—has a presence in India as well.

More on this story can be found on this blog.

Amazon has launched a Kindle Store specifically for India where books can be bought in rupees. While this looks interesting with works by a number of Indian authors also being made available, what is just as exciting is that Indians can finally get their hands on a Kindle without having to import it themselves. Amazon has tied up with Tata's Croma to offer the Kindle for Rs. 6999.

If you are one of those people who has paid through the nose for trendy, branded, American clothing via an online Indian retailer, then you might be interested in this article on Reuters. According to the report, it's highly likely that you have either bought old stock, unlicensed stock, or plain ol' counterfeit dregs.