Sunday, 19 April 2015

Flipkart to Shutdown!!!

Online retail giant Flipkart is gearing up to shut down its website by the end of this year if a new report is to be gone by. Flipkart-owned Myntra, a popular online shopping retailer specializing in clothing and accessories recently announced that it would be shutting its web portal from May 1.

Speculations were rife ever since that Flipkart would be following suit, soon enough and that it would go app-only if the experiment turns out well. A new report (via the Economic Times) confirms this and goes on to quote none other than vice-president, retail and head of brand alliances, Flipkart Michael Adnani as having made the stark confirmation on the same.

"In the next year or so, we're going to be only mobile," the ET quote report quotes Michael Adnani as saying.

The move to go app-only, he said resulted from the growing popularity of smartphones in the world's largest democracy as more and more people here are picking up the mobile route and shopping via the same. Of course, the number is still less when compared to the website platform, but Flipkart's move will certainly help the mobile medium to grow even further.

"A year ago, 6 per cent of our traffic was coming from mobile. In less than 18 months, that traffic is 10-fold. That shows the significance of what a mobile phone is doing for the consumers and consequently doing for us," Adnani was quoted in the same report.

The concept of online shopping has grown significantly in India in the last year or so. Quite obviously then e-retailers are looking to find better ways to connect with consumers, as also looking to find ways to generate greater profit. Smartphones being a mobile medium make more sense in the current scenario.

Figuratively speaking, Flipkart has over 40 million registered users. As many as 30,000 merchants are selling over 20 million products via this platform, going on to show the tremendous popularity of e-retail.

India is the third-largest internet market in the world after China and the U.S.A and as smartphones go cheaper each day, the number is surely going to spike up in the days to come.

With Flipkart and Myntra going app-only, others in the business are likely to follow suit, but it's still an 'experiment' as Flipkart calls it: it may go bust. But looking at the scheme of things, the decision to go app-only must have been taken after due consideration.

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