eBay India Shuts Shop As Flipkart Looks To Re-brand

From the 14th August 2018, eBay.in has officially closed it’s doors and is no longer accepting new transactions on the marketplace.

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After entering a merger agreement with the Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart in August 2017, eBay announced the end of the strategic partnership in May this year.

eBay announced that it planned to relaunch eBay India with a different focus on its offering and to focus more on cross-border trade.

Meanwhile, Flipkart has now announced that as it would be shutting eBay India on August 14, its products would now sell on a new platform yet to be released.

All Change In Indian Ecommerce

We wrote just this morning about how India is proposing a new bill which could affect how big businesses can operate in India.

The leading online retailer in the country said that they would now launch a new platform to sell refurbished goods as it attempts to tap into the market of pre-owned goods, which has remained largely unorganized and under utilized in India.

When the Flipkart-eBay India merger was announced last year, Flipkart had raised $1.4 billion from global technology giants including eBay, Microsoft, and Tencent.

Further, as part of the deal, eBay had invested $500 million for an equity stake in Flipkart and had handed over all operations of eBay India to Flipkart.

Now, with the strategic partnership ending, eBay India has posted a transition page, which states that the platform will stop accepting new orders.

The transition page points out that customers will not be able to use their pre-existing eBay account to make purchases on Flipkart and will have to register as a new user.

The eBay India page mentions that all purchases made or returned, furnished up to August 14, will be protected by eBay Guarantee.

Further, the purchase history of every user will be available on My PaisaPay and My eBay.

Flipkart made the announcement of a new platform for refurbished goods last month, when the company’s CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy sent out an email to his employees stating that the new platform will be launched immediately, succeeding the termination of all customer transactions on eBay.in.

It is worth noting that at this time we can not locate any new platform currently live.

“Based on our learning at eBay.in, we have built a brand new value platform launching with refurbished goods – a large market which is predominantly unorganized… As part of this launch, we will be stopping all customer transactions on eBay.in on 14th August 2018 and transitioning to the new platform,” said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart.