E-Commerce - Product Strategy - 2

In India, travel bookings was the first segment that has triggered the e-commerce interest. They started with reservations in trains and slowly expanded into other areas like flight and bus ticket bookings. Being one of the biggest railway networks in the world, "the need for easy availability of tickets" was a growth driver for this e-commerce site. If there is such a pull in the market, the e-commerce venture around that domain would not need extensive marketing budgets.

Sometimes the need for a category of items would not be very obvious in the market. In such cases a marketing survey needs to be conducted to understand the demand for that category in the market.

Once the domain is identified, the next step would be to identify the categories (electronics, books, apparel etc.) and corresponding items (cameras, home appliances, regional language books, T-shirts etc.).

It might not be a good idea to start with a bang and make available lot of items. It would be prudent to start with the items which have 'market pull' than 'market push'. The best example would be flipkart, which started with only books and expanded into many other categories slowly.

The other factors which can help decide on the categories and items:

1. Where can the items be procured from? Who are the major suppliers and what kind of 'credit-support' can they provide?
2. What is the roadmap for categories and items? Do we diversify (books, electronics, home appliances, apparel etc.) or operate in a niche area (socks, shoes etc.)?
3. Can the items be procured 'just-in-time', which can help with 'drop-shipping'?
4. What is the demand level for each item? This should help identify 'which items' and 'what quantity' needs to be stocked in warehouses.
5. What is the durability of the items? Are we talking about perishable food items or long lasting books?

6. What is the validity or expiry date of the items? We could be talking about outdated fashion items or pharmacy drugs here.

7. In which all regions and locations is there a demand for the items? Some items might be of more interest for people in rural areas. In this case, the order fulfillment needs to be though-through for last-mile dispatch of the items.
8. What is the price at which the items would be sold? There are certain items which can provide good returns on volume sales, while there are also luxury items which can be sold at premium. For cost-sensitive markets like India, determining items with correct pricing becomes even more important.
9. What does it take to deliver the items to the customers? Are the items big in size and needs special vehicles to carry the goods to the end-customer?
10. Does it need a 'call center' facility? If so, what should be the size of such facility in terms of number of people and where should it be located?

As can be noticed, the entire life-cycle of the products from 'procurement' through 'order' and 'cash' has to be thought-through before deciding on the product categories and items.

Needless to say, e-commerce play involves as much of defining good business strategy as the supporting technology. Though the end customer interacts through Internet medium and sees the e-commerce website as the face of the company, the back-end operations are quite important too.

E-Commerce is a long term play and needs deep-pockets in most of the cases.

E-Commerce - Product Strategy - 1

The first and foremost aspect in e-commerce is to decide on the products to be offered online. If one is already into a specific domain (for example retail apparel) and wants to extend into online space, then the next move becomes easier. If one is interested to get into e-commerce domain directly in the first place and has to decide on the products to be sold, exhaustive research needs to be done.

There are many goods and services that can be offered online. Typically, they can be classified into following broad categories:

1. Physical products (like books, electronics, apparel, lifestyle and deals)

2. Services online (like online marketplace, travel bookings, tax filing, video-on-demand and group-buying)

3. Digital Downloads (like ring-tones, mp3 music, wall-papers and images for websites)

4. Classifieds (like matrimony, jobs and property)

Each category of the products has its own unique characteristics that needs to be considered while making them available online.

Some of the physical products are big in size and quite expensive. The packaging and delivery needs must be considered carefully for such products especially from cost perspective.

One might think that providing services online should not be that challenging. While it is true that fulfillment and delivery are not quite difficult, providing the functionality itself is not that easy. Keeping the customer hooked on to the site to avail more services or repeat service is the key in this case. Earning the trust of the customer in some of the cases is also equally challenging.

The typical challenge with digital downloads category is the digital rights management. The digital content has to be procured from authentic source while paying due attention to copyrights. The complexity involved in delivery of the digital goods through various channels (like Web and SMS) cannot be undermined.

Classifieds is an area, which has been traditionally available in print medium. When it was moved online, it was the exact replica of mixed classifieds (sulekha, freeads etc) available on the Web too. Later, the specialized areas - like only job sites or only matrimony sites - have picked-up and delivered good results in India. There needs to be a good enough incentive for two or more parties to come together on a classifieds site to avail the service.

Identification of a domain is the first crucial step in starting an e-commerce venture.

E-Commerce India - Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer is the King or Queen. That is even more so in this Internet Age where customer experience can get shared easily using social media. The establishment of relationship with the customer starts the moment he includes a few items in his shopping cart of the e-commerce store.

Once the customer selects items and make payment, the order is supposed to have been captured. The order details along with items purchased, quantity, delivery address and any special instructions like gift wrapping or pre-defined time of delivery are to be provided to the fulfillment team. Based on the type of payment - cash on delivery or pre-paid - the process differs for delivery of items purchased.

The moment order is placed, the customer would be keen to receive them as per the delivery dates promised by the vendor. There must be a provision for the customer to track his orders on the e-commerce site where he purchased the items. Sites like Flipkart, owing to their own delivery services, provides that mechanism on their site itself. In cases like Indiatimes Shopping, the delivery status can be verified by using the tracking number associated with the 3rd party courier service (like Bluedart or Dhelivery) mentioned in the Order. For a customer, it does not matter how the delivery happens as long as it happens in time. For e-commerce companies, the operations to support delivery forms the backbone.

Whether the customer experience has been good or bad, it must be captured in a system for critical analysis later. The issues could be about payments, shipping or the item itself. Any immediate problems must be addressed with a sense of urgency. Customers in India (not sure about global space) are sensitive about payment issues, even if the amount involved is small. So issues like double charge for the same Order, refund of money in case of credit-card payments for Order cancellations or issues related to discount must be addressed immediately. Otherwise, the risk of losing that customer and hence his entire network of online buying family and friends looms large at the e-commerce vendor. My bad experience in shopping with Indiatimes was effectively addressed by the company.

Once the customer is happy with his overall experience on an e-commerce store, he is going to come back again. The entire e-commerce business hinges on acquiring large numbers of such customers, who provide repeat business. Hence, it is very important to keep track of such customers and provide benefits to them for their loyalty.  I have not seen any e-commerce store in India offering any substantial loyalty services. Or maybe I have not come across one so far.

But, information about new products, special discounts, pre-launch offers and clearance sales needs to be dispatched to all the customers on regular basis to keep the touch-point with them alive.

Needless to say, e-commerce companies must rely on information technology for all the above CRM needs. Customer, order, shipping, payment and feedback information gets stored in appropriate database. Huge amounts of this data can be moved to data warehouses and analyzed for business insights.

E-mail, Chat and Voice Support are the primary channels through which customer communicates with the e-commerce company. One key aspect in providing support to the end-customers is to integrate all these channels at the back-end. Irrespective of the channels I use - this could be many for an issue with the same order - to complain about an Order, it must be resolved.

If you are an end-customer - did you get that wonderful experience from that e-commerce store?

If you are an e-commerce company - could you acquire and retain customer and improve the loyalty base over a period of time through CRM?

E-commerce India - Inventory Management, Warehousing and Order Fulfillment

While e-commerce store front (website) provides customer interface on the Internet, good back-end operations lead to customer satisfaction. One of the important back-end operations of e-commerce is inventory management. When the customer browses the site, selects an item and makes payment, the item MUST be shipped to the customer in time. For that the item must be either produced by the e-commerce company itself or procured from a 3rd party.

If the procurement has to happen from a 3rd party, it can be arranged in different ways:

1. Drop-shipping

Items can be bought from the 3rd party just in time and shipped to the end-customer. In this case there must be direct connection for the e-commerce company with the appropriate vendors, dealers or publishers. In cases like Sweets and Snacks this will be the modus operandi, unless the vendor himself manages the e-commerce store.

2. Warehouse-based shipping

Certain quantity of items can be procured up-front, stored in a warehouse and shipped to the customer based on the order.

In the second case, the quantity of inventory that needs to be maintained in the warehouse has to be controlled appropriately. If there is less quantity of inventory then there would be inherent delay in procurement and shipping. If there is more than required quantity, the unnecessary occupancy of the warehouse would lead to financial disadvantage.

The inflow (from the suppliers) and outflow (to the end customers) of goods must be tightly controlled in the warehouse to restrict any damages and pilferage. The orders taken for delivery in a day must be reconciled at the end of the day to match shipments and pending orders.

If the e-commerce company has its own warehouses, the location and number of these should be carefully selected. Any shortages or excesses and wrong locations would drain all financial resources of the company in no time.

One can also outsource the warehouse and order fulfillment operations to a 3rd party. From zappos.com experience (as mentioned in the book by Tony Hsieh), one can understand that it is risky from different perspective to outsource such operations. Needless to say, one needs to be wary about outsourcing such operations.

The last part of order fulfillment involves delivery to the end customer at his premises. This is done by:

1. e-commerce company's own courier service (like in case of Flipkart)

2. Private delivery service center (the likes of DHL, Bluedart…)

3. Government courier service from Post Office
4. Hybrid of all the above modes (typical case)

With Cash-On-Delivery (CoD) becoming an important payment mechanism the delivery person not only has to ship the items, but also collect money from the end customer. There are companies like Gharpay, which specialized in cash collection.

Also, there are local companies which specialize in delivery of certain items and one such company is Delyver in Bangalore.

There is ample scope for companies operating in this domain to expand and increase the scope of their activities. There is also talk about Amazon and Walmart setting up their own courier operations in India and becoming successful Giants in the Indian e-commerce space. Let's wait and watch !

My bad experience with Indiatimes Shopping, an E-Commerce site in India

I know this post is very lengthy. But please do read for your own benefit !

 

I looked at so many e-commerce websites in India and done shopping on a few of them. I always used to think that all the sites look alike (is it not as easy as search, select and pay) and its very different to differentiate the services in the e-commerce domain. I felt that to be the reason for not much of competition in each of the domains (books, gadgets, apparel etc) and hence a few players.

I read "zappos.com - Delivering Happiness" book and wondered how Tony Hsieh could create so much impact through the customer service while focusing on selling only shoes online !

I was wondering how big guns like Futurebazaar can compete in a market growing with new entrants.

I knew that e-commerce is a long term game and it took eight solid years for Amazon to break-even. My initial impression was 'what was he doing for so many years apart from expanding the coverage and product base?'

Apart from Internet penetration the other major enablers for e-commerce adoption are credit-cards usage and trust. I was thinking earlier about 'trust' in the form of payments and delivery.

The thread that runs through all the above thinking is about 'customer experience'. I had a first-hand experience to understand about what could go wrong with customer experience in an e-commerce company.

Being an avid reader, I was greedy on my part to be tempted on a '30% more discount only for 3 days' offer by Indiatimes Shopping site. I went to the site on third day and browsed through the catalog.

I found multiple versions of a book and thought of them as different editions or paperback / hard-cover or indian / foreign editions. I wanted to check them all individually, but the site was inaccessible on every other request.

I selected the three books I wanted and went to 'check-out' option to review and confirm my order. To my surprise I found no option to navigate back to the main site and leave the check-out process in the middle. I personally feel this is restricting the user to not abandon the shopping cart. But I guess no one would like this option, given a choice.

I provided the payment details and got the 'Verified by Visa' page from payment gateway. I provided the code, which was verified and the redirection to the site was happening. As the Indiatimes Shopping was down (or probably not able to sustain high loads) at that time, it showed me an error page. This is a classic case of 'hung payment' when the user would not know whether his payment was through or not !

I checked the status of my order status through 'My Order' tab. It showed that my order is captured. The status column said 'Created'. I had to wonder what that really means ! Surprisingly, the 3 books I selected to buy earlier are still present in the shopping cart !

I haven't got a transaction SMS from the credit card provider. Usually these SMS messages come even before the re-direction to the site happens. I was puzzled that there was no message yet on that occasion.

I called up the voice support number that was provided on the website in each of the header pages. I got an 'invalid number' message !!

I was happy to find a chat option on the website and initiated chat. I got a welcome message and after a few seconds, I got an automated message saying that all the customer executives are busy. I was advised to leave a message, which I promptly did including my contact details. I never got a response from their support team through any channel - phone or e-mail.

I waited for an hour and checked my order status and it has not changed at all. I did not receive any SMS messages, phone calls or e-mails on the issue.

I found another number on their site and called-up that number. My order was verified and I was told to wait for an hour or so to see any change in status. I had no better option but to wait. Apparently, this is no toll-free number. I call up to raise a complaint about their system and pay for it too !

I provided my feedback on the site with all the details. I got an automated e-mail that the feedback is received. I haven't heard from their feedback team yet.

I waited till evening and checked the status of the order. Nothing changed. I thought I shall try to place the order again. As the items were still hanging in the 'Cart', I went to 'Check-out' process and tried to provide the gift coupon code. Surprise - no discount was allowed on the code !

I raised a case against my order. Yes, they have an option to report a case against an order. Not sure, if there is anyone looking into the cases at all - there is no response yet !

I called them again at about 6 PM in the evening and here is the conversation I had with the customer executive (CE):

CE	Thanks for calling Indiatimes Shopping. How can I help you?
Vijay	Hi. I placed an order with Indiatimes Shopping. My order seems to be captured but the items are still hanging in the shopping cart. I have not received any confirmation of my order. Can you please confirm the order?
CE	Give me your order number please.
Vijay	Here it is…
CE	[ does something for a few secs ] Sorry sir. All our systems are down currently
Vijay	So, what happens to my order?
CE	Sorry sir. All our systems are down currently
Vijay	Let me know how you can help me. Can I speak to one of your seniors? I have no complaints about YOU, but I just want to give my feedback about the system.
CE	Sorry sir. All of them are busy right now.
Vijay	So, what do I do now?
CE	You can call us after half an hour sir. Or much better, you can call us tomorrow.
Vijay	But the offer closes tonight.
CE	Sorry sir. All our systems are down currently.
Vijay	Ok then.
CE	Is there anything ELSE I can help you with sir?
Vijay	Yeah, Sure ! Can you get me a scoop of Coconut Ice-cream with Cone from Natural's? [ Click … ]

Except for the last statement the rest of the conversation is verbatim that happened with the customer executive. It's an understatement if I say 'It's heights of worst customer experience' !

I later got a couple of transaction alert notices from my credit card providers. I guess it happened through transaction reconciliations at later point in time. I don't know why it's duplicated. Now my money is taken, but there is no response or order-change status from Indiatimes. Apparently, I noticed this delayed response and delivery from this vendor from others' experiences shared on Internet.

I tweeted to them on twitter and got a cold and canned reply 'We regret your inconvenience…'.

As you could see, no unit of the customer service department functioned effectively and the lack of integration among all these units - online chat, feedback on website, order complaints, call center, twitter - was quite obvious. If the entire system had unexpected load, they could have at least devised a pro-active plan to deal with customers without losing their image.

Two lessons from this experience:

1. For all those entrepreneurs venturing into E-Commerce domain, remember that 'customer service' is the key. With all the experience I had at this shopping site now, I would not dare shop at their site in the near future - even if they give me 90% discount. Integrated functioning of the entire customer service department (and also with other departments) is quite important. Having no physical retail outlet, the website and the people over the phone becomes the 'face' of the company.

2. For all those online shoppers, beware of all the typical problems while shopping online. Share your experiences with others so that they would benefit while shopping on e-commerce sites; also, this would help the trustworthy companies to surface to the top.

If anyone has any other good or bad experiences, I would be happy to listen. Please do share  your experiences with one and all for their benefit.

If anything happens to my order, I will let you all know :-)

E-Commerce India - Sweets & Snacks

Everyone likes to munch a few snacks in the evening along with tea. Home made snacks still have preference, though the trend is slowly changing. When it comes to occasions, sweets are a must. I guess no other country consumes sweets like India and no wonder we are one of largest consumers of sugar. Apparently, we are also a nation of large diabetes population. Could it be anything other than direct correlation?

We love Rotis and everyone likes to make them fresh at home. Eating them out once in a while is becoming a norm, at least in cities. Not sure when the 'Italian Rotis' (Pizzas) have come into existence in India, they certainly have become popular. First there were dining outlets, then came only delivery outlets and now they can be ordered online. Isn't this evolution very natural for pizza companies? But I wonder what makes the Indian Rotis not consumable like the Italian ones - just like snacks? Or perhaps, we made the Italian Roti a snack :-)

Dominos (Jubiliant Foods) and Pizza Hut are dominant players in India from size and coverage perspective. They do have online presence and one can order their favorite pizzas from their website over Internet. With half the population in India being youth and smartphones becoming omnipresent, it is but logical to extend the service to hand-held devices.

Buying sweets on the street corner is not unusual in any part of India. Unlike in advanced countries, sweets are not just chocolates in India - there are mysore-pak, jhangri, kaju roll and hundreds of varieties more. Vendors got established and created brands from their products. They also expanded to multiple locations across the country and made more people happy during occasions. Employing a cook and getting the sweets prepared at home for occasions is slowly dwindling. 'Outsourcing' is happening at all the households as well.

I know folks who ordered birthday and anniversary cakes online for their family members, when they were travelling. Sweet Chariot is one popular cake shop online for such occasions.

Some of the online sweet vendors in India I encountered while surfing are Anand Sweets, Almond House, Madhulika, Mitha4All and Oder Your Choice.

One interesting aspect to note is that the original sweet / snack vendors do not seem to sell their products directly online. There is a 3rd party who is selling for them online. This is the case for Sri Krishna Sweets, K C Das Ghantewala or Haldirams.

If you have sweet tooth or like to gift sweets to your loved ones, you might not need to visit a physical shop in the future.

I guess there is a lot of scope for innovation and development in this space. Fresheness, quality and quick delivery are the key ! Any takers?

E-Commerce India - We can search for Property (Real-estate) Online

Indians love property / real-estate as much as they love gold and people. Business tycoons and earlier landlords in India are rich and famous mainly because of trade AND real-estate. Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood stars and producers became more rich due to investment in real-estate before economic boom. All these real-estate deals were closed with help from brokers or agents. But how does a middle-class person look for suitable property in a known or unknown location?

In olden days, friends, family and relatives were the main agents to trigger buying of real-estate property. They used to provide leads, influence the buying decisions and also connect to the seller directly many a times. Over a period of time, brokers or agents have taken active role and these middlemen were helping widen the search operations in a given area. The quest was mainly for a piece of land rather than a ready-made house. More food-grains can be produced, super luxury cars can be manufactured according to needs and jobs can be increased - but the land on earth remains constant ! (except in cases where water bodies are covered and utilized for real-estate)

With scarcity in land in prime locations, high-rise apartments have come into existence. Also, people started liking community culture - better safety, amenities like swimming pool, club-house, play area, neighbors for social interactions and friends for kids. With better economy, more jobs, increase in disposable income, the ability to purchase a house or a flat has grown by leaps and bounds. With assistance from banks and other financial institutions, purchasing a house at early stage of a career on loans has become commonplace. Obviously, this led to better growth of real-estate market.

Cut to modern times, people are travelling far-and-wide and their investments are diversified even within real-estate. If I live in Chennai and I am interested to buy a property in Coimbatore, how do I do that? I want to keep a constant watch on property availability in an area within my living city, so that I can buy a second property when there is a good bargain. How can I accomplish that? I moved to a new city and looking for a house for rent. Where do I go and search?

There are many a websites available for online property search in India either replacing or supporting the existing business model around real-estate. The first decade in the millennium has seen these sites mushroom with similar business models.

1	http://99acres.com
2	http://indiaproperty.com
3	http://indiaproperties.com
4	http://magicbricks.com
5	http://makaan.com
6	http://estatelister.com
7	http://homeshikari.com
8	http://iproperty.com
9	http://propmart.com
10	http://craigslist.com

In most cases, the listing of a property and browsing / searching is free. User can search for residential projects, commercial properties and land for various purposes. There are ample parameters to search for these properties - like minimum price, maximum price, locality, area and posting by owner, builder or dealer. User can also look at photographs and videos of the properties, which can help with buying-decision. Once the buyer identifies the property, he can get in touch with the seller and negotiate the deal offline.

Indiaproperty (which belongs to the same group as bharatmatrimony) was seen going aggressive in this segment with TV advertisements; I wonder if they are able to pull more user traffic to their sites with such heavy investments.

Magicbricks has adopted mobile strategy with introduction of their iPhone and Android applications. The feature that caught my attention with these applications is the ability to go in the field and check the properties available in that area on a map. That is what I call as being helpful. Of course I should have GPRS capability at least, to get the location information. I am not sure why they are not publicizing this important and useful feature in their advertisements. By the end of this decade, this feature would become the basis for property search.

Homeshikari, from TTK brand, has entered this domain recently but with a difference. There are no advertisements on their site and the details are quite helpful. They provide photos and videos of the properties as well as the floor plans with all possible details. As they say, no one searches for a property just based on city and direction; the search starts with the school for children, office for the working professionals at home and nearby hospitals; they have pretty neat integration with maps to provide similar search capability. Interesting they advertise in local FM Radio !

I heard about Non-Resident Indians (NRI) relying on craigslist to sell or buy properties in India.

Lots of these property sites rely on displaying advertisements, featured or sponsored projects and some property related services.

Even if the properties have come closer with technology, I do not think the broker / agent based approach would do-away in India any time soon. The reasons, I think, include:

1. Lack of trust on the property listings on the site

2. The sellers prefer to go through a broker as there are logistics issues involved; for example, if he stays in a different location and needs to show the house to visitors
3. Not all properties are listed as the owners might not be Internet users

I would wait for the day when each and every property would be tagged with an ID for easy identification. Once all the properties are tagged, the government could take a snapshot on one fine day and say that the properties are going to be tracked from that day onwards. All these real-estate property sites should then be tagged with those identities for easy verification. Is it possible to achieve this level of transparency with respect to real-estate in India ever?

While speaking of transparency and good governance, I need to mention about my recent finding. I came to know only recently that there is something called 'MLC Graduates Constituency' in India. Any graduate can register with the nearest local government administration. Once registered, the graduate can participate in voting for a Member of Legislative Council (MLC) contesting in that region. If you are a graduate, you can also register (I did) and make a difference by electing the right candidate !

E-Commerce India - Health, Fitness, Personal Care and Beauty Products Online

With better education, burgeoning economy and increased disposable income, people in India are looking at health, fitness and beauty more consciously. Health is certainly a top-priority for any family member and especially the bread winner. Fitness, which was perceived to be more for the Bollywood and Cricket stars, is understood as state of mind and body for one and all. Beauty is associated with both women and men these days.

Traditionally, people were used to more physical hard work and the fitness levels were obviously high. As the options to travel and eat-out were limited, the scope to become ill has come down (or rather increased?). Consulting a doctor and a pathologist, if something is perceived to be not right, used to be a norm.

In modern days, checking blood pressure and diabetes is a child's play and no one bothers to see a doctor for the same. There are self-use devices, which can help with the task. These devices were available only outside India a few years back, but they are available even online now.

Oral hygiene and Eye Care are the terms that one learn feverishly for exams during school days and forgets them conveniently till they hear about the word 'Insurance'. There are e-commerce sites like HealthKart which offer these products online now.

Beauty and personal care products were available only in cities some time  back. But things have changed:

• Make-up is not meant only for occasions like marriage, it's a daily need especially for corporate women.
• Thanks to advertisements, people are conscious about dandruff and hair-fall; hair-care is a commonly used word now.
• Who wouldn't want a smooth and fair skin? Special skin-care is a necessity for many.
• Bath is becoming more of a pleasure activity with bath-tubs, body oils, bath-gels and bath bubbles.
• While showing respect by touching feet is declining, ironically there are plenty of products available to pamper one's feet - like feet scrub, insoles, gels, powders and stones.

With growing needs across different segments (men, women, seniors) in the country, there was a good business case to setup online stores with the beauty and personal care products. Websites like 365Gorgeous and MedPlusBeauty offer products for medical and beauty purposes.

There is no denial that human body needs proteins, minerals and vitamins for efficient functioning of all the organs. People are taking to the gyms to improve their body fitness (maintain body mass index, reduce body fat, improve stamina) for longevity with little illness. There is increasing awareness about taking extra nutrients before and after regular exercises to reach fitness goals. There are sites like MyNutraMart, which sell these nutrient supplements online.

If I am a frequent user of certain beauty, fitness, personal care or medical products (not regular medicines, but the ones available online without prescription), there is comfort and convenience to order them online every time. Is it not?

E-Commerce in India - Buy Electronics (Gadgets, Computers, Home Appliances) Online

India is certainly not a manufacturing hub for electronics. But when it comes to leveraging gadgets and other electronics, Indians are tech savvy and consume electronics to the best of its availability. Though the advancements in terms of technology usage are not at the same level as in developed countries, the interest and enthusiasm is much more.

In the new millennium, people have adopted using computers not just for work but also for infotainment purpose at home. Laptops and Notebooks have gained popularity in the households. With the evolution of such devices into convenient, easy-to-use and one-for-all-purpose Tablets, such gadgets are known to one and all. Photography is a hobby for many and travel-bugs are doubling as shutter-bugs. Featured phones are out and smartphones are trendy. Washing machines are replacing maids. TVs and Refrigerators are 'needs' rather than 'wants'.

Where would one buy these gadgets? With improvement in dealer and distributor network across India, folks in tier-3 and lower also have opportunities to buy some of the electronic items locally. There are many secret places where people get 'good deals', but the genuineness and warranty would not be available in such cases. People are shying away from such places for obvious reasons and adopting to online world for good bargains.

Online e-commerce stores have improved from payment (more payment options, less declines), shipping (remote places are no more 'remote') and policies (free return in many cases - no questions asked) perspective. Buying big & heavy (washing machine) or expensive (Laptops and Cameras) electronic items online is no more an issue. Sit at home, explore, research, compare prices and buy the best possible electronic item that fits your requirements and budget.

Here are some options to buy electronic items online.

Online Exclusive Electronic stores	http://buytheprice.com/ http://saholic.com http://gadgets.in http://gadgetsguru.com http://theitdepot.com http://bigadda.com http://timtara.com http://cromaretail.com http://theelectro.com http://playmore.in http://techshop.in
Online Shopping Malls selling Electronics	http://ebay.in http://junglee.com http://homeshop18.com http://flipkart.com http://infibeam.com http://indiaplaza.in http://naaptol.com http://futurebazaar.in http://tradus.in http://shopping.indiatimes.com http://koovs.com http://yebhi.com http://ibazaarindia.com http://shopping.rediff.com http://snapdeal.com
Online Deals for Electronics	Check for Online deals in India
Price Comparison for Electronics Online	Check for best price available
Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Sites for Electronics Purchase	http://dell.com http://lenovo.com http://hp.com http://ifbappliances.com

Players like Apple are releasing latest products in India more or less simultaneously when they launch them elsewhere in the world.  There is plenty of choice and feast for the gadget freaks. If 'electronic' items are not sold through 'electronic commerce', what else will? :-)