eBay partners with Best Deal TV to sell celebrity endorsed products

Home shopping channel Best Deal TV entered into a partnership with online marketplace eBay enabling Best Deal TV to make use of the ecommerce player's Cross Border Trade Business to sell celebrity endorsed products, the company said in a press release.

"Since our launch we have been getting a lot of interest from Indians residing internationally, wanting to buy our exclusive celebrity products. The collaboration with eBay India will help us service those and many other Bollywood loving customers worldwide," said Raj Kundra, CEO of Best Deal TV.

Facilitated by the partnership, Best Deal TV will list 2000 SKUs across categories like home, fashion and lifestyle via its store on eBay. These products will be listed on three eBay platforms, namely: www.ebay.com, www.ebay.co.uk, and www.ebay.com.au targeting customers in USA, UK and Australia respectively.

Speaking on the occasion, Latif Nathani, Vice President and Managing Director of eBay India, said, "eBay India's CBT business today provides 20,000 entrepreneurs an opportunity to export to global audiences. The partnership with Best Deal TV will enable us to offer credible and celebrity endorsed products to audiences across three countries."

According to Nathani, eBay plans to expand the offering of Best Deal TV to 17 countries in the next six months.

Celebrity endorsed products in the likes of Shilpa Shetty's designer slim jeans, Farah Khan's air loc containers, Bipasha Basu's suggested air fryers and Sanjeev Kapoor's cookware collection are will be sold through the online platform.

Flipkart, Practo CEOs get top rating

Chief executives of healthcare platform Practo and India's biggest e-commerce company Flipkart have received among the highest approval ratings from their employees, compared to CEOs of other major new-age ventures, according to data from US-based job hunting website Glassdoor.com.

Practo has 100% of its reviewers approving Shashank N D as CEO, while Flipkart's Sachin Bansal, an alumni of IIT-Delhi, has an approval rating of 94%. Snapdeal chief executive Kunal Bahl has the approval of 91% of reviewers, and restaurant review website Zomato's Deepinder Goyal has received 88%. Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO of India's largest taxi aggregator Olacabs, and Vijay Sekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm, are not as popular with their employees. Ola has a CEO approval rating of 70% and Paytm 69%, respectively.

As for overall ratings of the companies, which look at parameters such as culture & values, work/life balance, senior management, compensation & benefits and career opportunities, Flipkart scores 3.9 (on a scale of 5 where 5 is the highest), Practo 3.5, Zomato 3.3 and Snapdeal 3.3.

Glassdoor.com, operated by Glassdoor Inc, features profiles of companies and allows users to rate and review their employers and top managers, and provides information on interviews and salaries. The ratings are based solely on employee feedback.

"Companies with high ratings tend to have engaged and motivated employees who believe in the company's mission, feel that their job matters, and feel they have career opportunities to advance within their organization. They also tend to share that they feel they get paid fair market value, are heard by senior leaders, and enjoy some great benefits and perks, too," Scott Dobroski, career trends analyst, Glassdoor, said. "For big companies, it would have been good to have an option for employees to rate the entire management team, as it gives a more holistic view," Nirupama V G, managing director of recruitment firm Ad Astra Consultants, told TOI. "But for startups, the ratings are a true reflection, because the CEO is the manager, he is always in touch with his employees and is hands on," she added.

Among major IT companies in India, Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka gets the highest approval percentage. Sikka, who became the CEO of the Bengaluru-based IT service provider last August, has been approved by 95% of the 12,000 people who reviewed the company on Glassdoor. Cognizant's Francisco D'Souza comes a close second with 94%, followed by TCS's Natarajan Chandrasekharan with 87%. Wipro's CEO T K Kurien has an approval percentage of 74% and HCL's Anant Gupta scores 69%. Glassdoor asks if employees would recommend their company to a friend. Here, Infosys does not fare so well, with only 67% employees saying they would recommend. This is 78% and 70% for Cognizant and TCS respectively. HCL stands at 61% and Wipro 60%. On overall ratings, Cognizant scores above its competitors with 3.5, followed by Infosys and TCS at 3.3 and Wipro and HCL at 3.1.

Among mid-tier IT companies, Bengaluru's Indegene, a privately held company which provides R&D and marketing solutions to pharmaceutical MNCs, has very high ratings on every parameter.

Flipkart to offer refunds to customer within 24 hrs

Flipkart has today launched its instant refund mechanism facility, a move that will help its customers get refunds as early as within 24 hours of returning the product.

Previously, the refund process used to take three to five business days."Flipkart aims to ensure that refunds for Cash on Delivery (CoD) orders are credited back to customers instantly, as soon as the product reaches the Flipkart hub," Flipkart said in a statement.

The instant refund will be completed using Immediate Payments System (IMPS) transfers, it said adding that the CoD IMPS return facility is currently active for banks having IMPS transaction capability. The customers will be regularly notified about the status of their refund via SMS and emails, it said.

"Our return procedure is already one of the fastest in the country. In the last two months, we have extended this further by piloting the IMPS refunds programme, which has seen positive adoption and traction from our end users," Flipkart Chief Product Officer Punit Soni said.

"An instant, hassle-free refund experience, combined with consistent and accurate communication to the customer is definitely going to be a breakthrough, and a way forward for all future payment innovations," he added.

"We strongly feel that enabling our fast-growing product IMPS with Flipkart's quicker refund strategy will create a benchmark experience to customers," National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) COO Dilip Asbe said.

Transactions on IMPS can be accessed and initiated across different channels like mobile phones, PCs, NUUP, ATM and at bank branches.

More than 12 million successful transactions are been processed every month, Asbe said.

Meanwhile, in June this year Snapdeal has launched a service called- '90 minutes reverse pick-ups'. Where customers wishing to return/ replace their online orders will be reached within 90 minutes of intimation.

TVS Capital to buy stake in Falguni Nayar’s Nykaa.com

TVS Capital will put in Rs25 crore of Rs60 crore series C funding in the wellness e-commerce firm
 

Falguni Nayar, founder and chief executive of Nykaa, a beauty and wellness e-commerce firm. Photo: Getty Images

Mumbai: TVS Capital Funds Ltd, the private equity and venture capital arm of TVS Group, is set to acquire a minority stake in Nykaa.com, the online beauty products retailer founded by investment-banker-turned-entrepreneur Falguni Nayar, according to two people familiar with the development.

Also participating in the Rs.60-crore Series C fundraising are a clutch of investors, including high net-worth individuals, non-resident Indians (NRIs) and family offices, the first person said.

TVS Capital will invest about Rs.25 crore, he added.

“Yes, we are nearly completing the fundraising process,” confirmed Falguni Nayar, chief executive officer, Nykaa.com, without disclosing the details of investors. “We plan to open more offline stores in various airports, such as Mumbai and Bangalore,” added Nayar.

According to Nayar, the plans include acquiring the distribution rights in India for a global beauty brand as well as launching private labels in the make-up and bath and body segments.

Nykaa opened its first offline store at Delhi airport’s Terminal 3 last year. The company claims to offer 300 brands and 15,000 products under various categories, including a selection of make-up, skincare, hair care, fragrances, bath and body and luxury products for women and men.

The stake sale was done at an enterprise value of Rs.500 crore, which is about five times more than the valuation during the last fundraising in 2014, said the second person. A TVS Capital spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.

Nayar launched Nykaa.com with her husband Sanjay Nayar, chief executive at KKR India, in 2012. They have invested $2 million in the company.

Before launching Nykaa, Falguni Nayar was managing director at Kotak Mahindra Capital Co. Ltd.

FSN E-Commerce Ventures Pvt. Ltd, which runs Nykaa.com, raised Rs.20 crore ($3.4 million) from several investors last year by selling about 20% stake.

About half of all women online shoppers buy skincare, beauty and cosmetics products, according to a report by Forrester Research Inc. and Google India last year. The number of online shoppers in India will grow three times to 100 million by 2016 from 35 million in 2014, the report had added.

“About 75-80% of the e-commerce market is held by four to five large players through horizontal model and the remaining 20-25% of the market in vertical model is held by firms in niche categories such as babycare, personal and wellness products, which also see increased interest from the investors,” said Ankur Bisen, senior vice-president (retail and consumer products) at Technopak Advisors, a consulting firm.

Nykaa.com’s nearest competitor Purplle.com had in 2011 secured an undisclosed investment by a consortium of Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels and The Chennai Angels, and Series A fund worth $5 million from IvyCap Ventures in January.

In the online beauty products segment, Nykaa competes with firms such as Mumbai-based firms FabBag.com (formerly Vellvette.com), Beautykafe.com and Bengaluru-based VioletBag.com as well as large e-commerce firms Flipkart, Snapdeal, Myntra and Jabong.

The beauty-and-wellness industry in India will double to Rs.80,000 crore in 2017 from Rs.40,000 crore in 2014, according to a report last year by KPMG.

“The sector is thriving on the increasing section of affluent and middle-class population that has started considering beauty and wellness as a necessity,” the report added.

Facebook, Flipkart, 28 others testify against Google India

Preliminary inquiry by Competition Commission of India finds Google abusing its dominant market position.

Flipkart, Facebook, Nokia's maps division, Makemytrip.com and several other companies have corroborated complaints that the US internet giant abused its dominant market position, in their response to queries raised by the Competition Commission of India.
Based on the responses from 30 businesses spanning search, social networks, e-commerce, travel and content sites, the CCI director general last week filed a report that accuses Google of abusing its dominant position to rig search outcomes, both the actual search result as well as sponsored links.

This marks the first case globally where an antitrust body is formally raising such charges against Google. The initial complaints were filed by Bharat Matrimony and a Jaipur-based not-for-profit, Consumer Unity and Trust Society. Microsoft has made an extensive submission on Google's alleged abuse of power, according to the report, seen by ET. Others who responded to the CCI include MapmyIndia.com, Hungama Digital and GroupM.

Google needs to file its response to the findings by September 10, and a week later present before the seven-member commission headed by chairman Ashok Chawla. The proceeding can go on for several hearings before the commission makes a decision, which can be challenged in the Supreme Court.

If the commission finds Google guilty, it can ask the company to make changes in the way it does business. CCI may also impose a fine up to 10% of Google's income. The CCI could also pursue against top Google executives. Google posted a net income of more than $14 billion on revenue of $66 billion in 2014.

"We're currently reviewing this report from the CCI's ongoing investigation," a Google spokesman said in an email to ET. "We continue to work closely with the CCI and remain confident that we comply fully with India's competition laws. Regulators and courts around the world, including in the US, Germany, Taiwan, Egypt and Brazil, have looked into and found no concerns on many of the issues raised in this report."

The commission's report finds Google liable on two counts. First, Google's proprietary content supersedes relevance of the search by an individual. This means, for example, even though Moneycontrol.com may have a higher hit rate for a stock market search in India, Google Finance links are given priority. Similarly, Google Hotels gets preference over other travel portals that may have higher traffic and therefore mathematically more appropriate as first results of a search.

The second is that the sponsored links thrown up after a search are dependent purely on the amount of advertising paid to Google, and sometimes even supersede the link of the actual trademarks being searched. Flipkart, in its observation, said it has found search results to have a direct correlation with the amount of money the ecommerce portal spends on Google advertising. A Flipkart spokesman declined comment on the company's response.

Dramatic changes in results
The report finds that the prominence of the search result is dependent on a quality score. The score itself says the report is calculated ambiguously. It highlights that Google modifies its search algorithms without in forming users and changes results in dramatic changes. It cites the example of a UK website, Ciao!, which slipped to the second page of search results from one of the top results overnight.

As a result of this the organisation lost substantial business. "As a result of Google policy, it is unavoidable for the trademark owners to participate and outbid third parties in the auction process for their ads to appear above others in response to search queries on their own trademark keywords," said the report.

The report dismisses Google's submission that its nature of search is similar to that of Facebook and Twitter, which the report says are social networks, not web searches.

A Facebook response cited in the document elaborates how search ing within the social networking site is different from web searches.

Hence, the DG concludes that Google's practices were counter productive to innovation, as they increase costs for listed websites.

Google's using foreign arbitration clauses in case of disputes is also considered abuse of dominance, according to the report.

Google has the option to seek more time to respond to the CCI report. It had been fined Rs 1 crore last year for delaying information the commission had sought. Before the commission Google will be represented by law firms AZB & Partners and Economic Law Practice, while the two informants are represented by Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas and APJ-SLG Law Offices.

Google has successfully emerged from a similar query by the Fair Trade Commission of the US after it made some voluntary commitments to changes. Google adopted a similar approach with the European Commission, but the EC after a series of submissions has raised a statement of objection to which Google responded last week.

The commission will now deliberate on the matter before pronouncing a verdict in favour or against Google. If the Indian body beats the EU to it, experts said the outcome here could affect the one in Europe.