After receiving a lukewarm response for its C2C marketplace last year, Facebook is now testing the waters in India’s e-commerce sector by soon launching the B2C transactions. According to people familiar with the matter, the social media giant has already initiated discussions with several established brands to list their products on its market place.
Sources further claim that Facebook will start testing B2C transactions this month and may prepare for soft launch possibly next month. Reports also claim that Facebook has confirmed to few media houses that it is indeed testing B2C transactions.
This latest development comes just as the Indian e-commerce industry is bracing itself for major transition in the wake of Flipkart’s impending takeover by Walmart. Although Facebook’s B2C experimentation initially will be on a very small scale, it will still be very interesting to see whether this experiment manages to raffle some feathers in the e-commerce market.
When Facebook launched its marketplace for C2C transactions barely six months back, it then wanted to disrupt the space that was long dominated by established players like OLX, Quikr and Craigslist. However, the C2C marketplace failed to ramp up any major interests from consumers owing to repeated consumer complaints and several other pressing issues.
India’s e-commerce continues to be an attractive proposition
Regardless of the fact that Flipkart and Amazon are still far from making standalone profit & revenue, India’s e-commerce market still manages to attract interest from global players. Apart from Facebook, Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc expressed strong interest in India’s ballooning online shopping market after it invested in Bengaluru based e-commerce app Dunzo and e commerce company Fynd.
Besides, Google is all set to pick minority stake in Flipkart as it is party to the ongoing Flipkart-Walmart deal.
All these efforts by Google, Facebook and all other e-commerce players are obviously aimed at cracking India’s highly lucrative e-commerce market, which is been touted to become $200 billion market by 2026.