Skip to main content

Deck.blue brings a TweetDeck experience to Bluesky users

With over 3 million users and plans to open up more broadly in the months ahead, Bluesky is still establishing itself as an alternative to Twitter/X. However, that hasn’t stopped the developer community from embracing the project and building tools to meet the needs of those fleeing the now Elon Musk-owned social network, formerly known […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/TBbEAPF
Post a Comment

Amazon, facing ‘unfavorable regulatory environment’ in India, struggles to expand

Amazon is lagging its chief rival Flipkart in India on several key metrics and struggling to make inroads in smaller Indian cities and towns, according to a report by investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein.

The American e-commerce giant’s 2021 gross merchandise value in the country, where it has deployed over $6.5 billion, stood between $18 billion to $20 billion, lagging Flipkart’s $23 billion, the analysts said in a report to clients Tuesday that was obtained by TechCrunch. The company’s recent spendings for growth in India has also made profitability “elusive,” the report added.

India is a key overseas market for Amazon, where it competes with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, Walmart-owned Flipkart and social commerce startups SoftBank-backed Meesho and Tiger Global-backed DealShare. Amazon has so far offered “a weaker proposition in ‘new’ commerce” in the country, the report added.

At stake is one of the world’s last great growth markets. The e-commerce spending in India is expected to double in size to over $130 billion by 2025.

Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Amazon has struggled to scale volumes in higher-margin categories such as fashion and BPC, while the inability to operate a 1P model (inventory led) has limited the availability of private labels vs. competition which further pressures margins. Amazon’s management attrition has also increased recently, potentially signaling difficulties achieving desired scale,” the report adds.

Amazon, like Walmart’s Flipkart, operates a marketplace business in India due to local regulatory requirements. It’s facing a wide range of other regulatory pushback in the country. Marketplaces cannot have a controlling stake in sellers on their platform. Amazon and Flipkart have reduced their stakes in their largest sellers. Amazon had a controlling stake in Cloudtail and Appario but has reduced it to 24%.

A single seller cannot have more than a 25% share on a foreign-owned online marketplace. No e-commerce marketplace platform can mandate a seller/brand to sell exclusively on the platform. “It has also clamped down on deep discounts,” the report adds. Additionally, a new guideline proposed by India’s central bank, if enforced, will impact Amazon’s buy now, pay later offering, the report added.

Image Credits: Sanford C. Bernstein

Other takeaways from the report:

  • Amazon is less competitive in grocery and beauty and personal care categories.
  • Amazon’s India Prime membership offering is much the same as in the U.S. in terms of entertainment availability, but its logistics network size pales in comparison (13 m sq. ft. vs. 375 m sq. ft.) limiting SKUs available for half-day delivery.
  • Amazon missing out in terms of engagement metrics and download share. Flipkart was the leader during the festival season last year, capturing a share of 62% while Amazon had a share of 27%.

  • Image Credits: Sanford C. Bernstein

  • Image Credits: Sanford C. Bernstein



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/h25gBy6
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nimbus launches tiny EV prototype that’s like a motorbike with a roof

As shared e-scooter companies have infiltrated cities and e-bike sales have soared, micromobility has been offered up as a panacea to save us all from the ill humors and packed streets caused by gas-guzzling cars. However, one of the major roadblocks in front of well-intentioned city dwellers who’d love to trade in their cumbersome and environmentally unfriendly vehicles for an e-bike or scooter remains: What happens when it rains? Nimbus, a California-based electric vehicle startup, wants to solve that problem with a simple solution: Put a roof on it. The company recently came out of stealth with a prototype for its Nimbus One, a tiny, three-wheeled EV that “combines the convenience and cost of a motorbike with the safety and comfort of a car.” The Nimbus One. Image Credits: Nimbus The thin, pod-like vehicle is only about 2.75 feet wide and 7.5 feet long, which Nimbus says makes it three to five times smaller than a compact car — the better to park and navigate busy urban stree...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pitch Deck Teardown: Encore’s $3M seed deck

For this week’s Pitch Deck Teardown, I’m (virtually) traveling to Sweden to take a look at the $3 million seed round raised by developer tool startup Encore . The company is creating what it calls a software development platform for the cloud. It reportedly raised from Crane Venture Partners with Acequia Capital ,  Essence Venture Capital  and  Third Kind Venture Capital joining the round. I wanted to take a look at this deck in more detail, in particular, because it tells a really elegant story in a market where it’s extraordinarily hard to differentiate yourself — both to your customers and to investors! Pitching a dev tool in a way that tells the story well enough to understand but without dropping deep into a rabbit hole is a particularly hard challenge, and that’s the needle Encore threads ever so efficiently in this 24-slide pitch deck. We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that ....
Post a Comment
Read more

Multifamily housing has missed the solar boom. PearlX wants to fix that with $70M Series B

If you’re a renter and you want solar power, you’re usually out of luck. For most, the only option is a community solar program, where people subscribe to utility-scale projects, but they’re not available everywhere. And given that most renters only stay for a few years, which of them are going to pay tens of thousands of dollars for solar panels — and what landlord would let them? That’s where PearlX comes in. “Think of us as like the Sunrun for renters,” said co-founder and CEO Michael Huerta, referring to the company that rents solar installations to single-family homeowners. “PearlX is a rental electrification platform.” Earlier this year, the startup began installing solar panels and backup batteries at multifamily rentals in Texas as part of its “TexFlex” project. PearlX’s next step, which Huerta shared exclusively with TechCrunch, will be a California expansion called “Flexifornia.” The startup is also rolling out a virtual power plant, which will allow the company to tap the...
Post a Comment
Read more