Niche Etailers Disrupt Ecommerce Trinity’s Business; IRCTC proclaims ‘explore us to increase sales’

Last week IOS shared Morgan Stanley’s report that revealed how the combined GMV of Indian ecommerce industry’s trinity – Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal was more than the top ten offline retailers in 2015.

While the ecommerce leaders did gain more than offline firms, it also lost online market share in 2015 compared to last year due to small niche players, as per the Morgan Stanley report.

Niche and small players eating into dominant players’ market share

Popularity of category-focused niche etailers such as online lingerie store Zivame, furniture portals Urban Ladder, Pepperfry and jewellery platforms Carat Lane, Velvet Case, Blue Stonegrew tremendously in 2015. Investors including Ratan Tata poured in millions of funds to back such players and helped them to expand aggressively.

On the other hand online marketplaces tried hard to keep excessive discounts in check last year. This is why it seems niche etailers managed to grab a tiny portion of the market share from the big players, as buyers wandered away in search of other options.

As per the Morgan Stanley report:

• napdeal’s market share in terms of GMV dropped from 32% in 2014 to 26%  in 2015
• Amazon India’s market share in terms of GMV dropped from 15% in 2014 to  12% in 2015
• Flipkart’s market share increased from 44% in 2014 to 45% in 2015
• Combined market share of Snapdeal, Amazon and Flipkart declined from 91% in 2014 to 83% in 2015
• Niche etailers market share increased from 2% in 2014 to 10% in 2015
• > Snapdeal’s market share in terms of GMV dropped from 32% in 2014 to 26%  in 2015
• > Amazon India’s market share in terms of GMV dropped from 15% in 2014 to  12% in 2015
• > Flipkart’s market share increased from 44% in 2014 to 45% in 2015
• > Combined market share of Snapdeal, Amazon and Flipkart declined from 91% in 2014 to 83% in 2015
• > Niche etailers market share increased from 2% in 2014 to 10% in 2015

• A positive sign according to industry experts

  Small players gaining market share indicate that there’s a lot of room for others in the ecommerce industry besides the top three players.
• Can IRCTC help ecommerce biggies?
• The underlying message of this one sentence appears to be ‘Ecommerce leaders and other players, come and explore IRCTC’s huge potential and increase your revenue.’
  And why not? With 390 million registered users, 250 million active users and 4.15 lakhaverage bookings per day, the portal is one of the most visited online sites in India.
• While Amazon India has already collaborated with Indian Railways, others like Snapdeal, Paytm, Flipkart, and Shopclues should consider tying-up too to increase their market share.