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eBay, CAIT ink MoU to promote Indian e-tail sector, worth $3.2 billion
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Saturday, 19 April, 2014, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Ashwani Maindola, New Delhi
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fiogf49gjkf0d A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was inked by e-commerce portal eBay and the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) in New Delhi recently. The objective of the collaboration was to boost the Indian e-commerce sector (currently pegged at approximately $3.2 billion) in general, and food e-tail in particular.
Under the agreement, retailers can sell their products by enlisting them on e-Bay. They would be charged commission ranging between one and seven per cent for various categories. Food e-tail is currently not a category.
“There are about six crore retailers in India. The annual turnover of total retail trade is around Rs 20 lakh crore,” said Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general CAIT. “Food retail, both large and small, accounts for about Rs 2-5 lakh crore, which is about 25 per cent of the total annual retail turnover in the country,” he added.
“We expect that the platform would provide traders an opportunity to expand their businesses,” Khandelwal said, adding that he expected that about 10-15 per cent of the transactions on eBay would be in food, particularly packaged foods, spices and ingredients.
He added, “eBay and CAIT would be mutually beneficial. The former would bring its expertise to the table, and provide us the opportunity to sell our products across 201 countries and 4,306 locations across India.”
“While the traders would have the benefit of retaining their brand names, we would encourage them to get listed with eBay. This would further expand the categories currently available with eBay platform,” said Khandelwal.
The agreement was framed keeping in mind the fact that education of traders about e-commerce was the need of the hour. It stated that there would be a Centre of Excellence (COE) on the CAIT Retail School campus.
The school is a CAIT initiative, and the office-bearers of the traders’ body undertake workshops for retailers in various cities to provide information about the modern methods of retailing.
The COE would launch a nationwide campaign to educate the business community about upgradation and modernisation. CAIT’s office-bearers and eBay’s management had a series of meetings to finalise the details of the future roadmap for the same.
Meanwhile, Latif Nathani, managing director, eBay India, stated that they expected the online food trade to grow more.
“Currently, we have a sub-category called gourmet food, wherein packaged food is available. It also comprises herbs and ingredients like spices and health food,” he added.
Food trade is not among the top-selling categories, but Nathani reiterated that this platform would provide CAIT members an e-commerce opportunity.
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