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India’s consumer internet and e-commerce market exploded in 2014, but so far firms in the space have built their businesses only for the top 50-75 million shoppers in the country. Growth in the sector has also not come at the breakneck speed that companies and investors originally predicted in 2015, at the height of the start-up funding boom. Even Flipkart and Amazon, the biggest e-commerce platforms, have far smaller user bases than social media companies.Messaging platform WhatsApp and its parent Facebook both have more than 200 million users in India, according to analysts. Using the large user base of these platforms, a slew of fresh social commerce start-ups have given the e-commerce sector a new lease of life.
Regulations are playing spoilsport for Indian startups
After e-commerce, investors are finally riding the social start-up wave
ow startups are not just worried about managing warp-speed growth. Instead, they’re spending inordinate amounts of time keeping pace with a rapidly changing regulatory landscape. All of a sudden, companies and small startups that have been trying to carve our small niches are finding themselves caught up in a confounding maze of proposed laws and regulations. While large sectors such as ecommerce are worried about provisions in a draft law, other entrepreneurs ranging from cryptocurrency to online pharma are concerned that a wave of legislation — some implemented and others at
fter souring on e-commerce start-ups for more than three years, investors are finally pumping capital again with new companies such as GlowRoad, Shop101, Ezmall and Meesho leading the next wave of e-commerce in India. These social start-ups are riding on the user bases of social media platforms like WhatsApp or traditional media platforms to build e-commerce solutions for the next 200-300 million users in India.
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various stages of consideration — will trip up India’s ascendant startup scene. Entrepreneurs acknowledge that the government has a tough task at hand. While on the one hand the Narendra Modi-led government is committed to promoting entrepreneurship, it also has to worry about the effect these ventures are causing the brick-and-mortar economy.
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