Wall Street investors subsidizing online shopping of Indians

New Delhi, Dec 3: The Indian consumers had never experienced such a festive season offer which e-commerce companies had provided this year. The 2014 festive season from Diwali to Christmas has seen unprecedented deals on a number of products and services by online companies.

The online companies which are fighting for dominance in Indian market could end up spending close to a billion dollars (about Rs 6,000 crore) on discounting, marketing, and ramping up their employee strength, says a Times of India report.

The report say online players like Flipkart, snapdeal and Amazon have swallowed about half a billion dollars of investor money during the much-hyped Diwali festive season offer.

The report further said that big internet investors like Yuri Milner's DST Global and Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Corp have fuelled billion of dollars in India's online shopping market. This means that Indian consumers have been subsidized by Wall Street investors.

These online companies are not only providing electronic gadgets or clothes at mouth watering prices. But other services like app-driven cabs are also being offered by companies like Uber, Ola etc which get funds from bulge-bracket backers. These companies are providing cab at much cheaper rates that auto rickshaw.

"By offering discounts, e-tailers are looking to expand the market. The bigger the deal a customer gets, the greater the chances of her shopping online," a Snapdeal investor was quoted as saying in the report.

OneIndia News