Has Infibeam Maintained It’s Mark As E-Retailer – Comparison With FlipKart And Snapdeal

Infibeam started in 2007 as an online book store but today they deal in wide range of products. Infibeam is often compared with Flipkart as they both started in same year and both received almost same unique visitors in mid 2009 but from there Flipkart took a leap. Infibeam is one of those early enterers who changed how Indian population looked at e-commerce. For an e-retailer it is utterly important to have good catalogue size, competitive pricing, maintain product exclusivity and good customer service.

In this report we would analyze Infibeam’s catalogue size, exclusive products and for how many products Infibeam is the best seller in terms of prices. For this analysis we have considered four categories viz. Mobiles, Laptops, Tablets and Cameras. The data is sourced in the last week of May from FindYogi.com.

• Infibeam has 906 SKUs across all four categories that are considered for this report.
• They have 1311 offers under 906 SKUs. There could be multiple offers under single SKU as different colors of the same product are considered as single SKU for the sake of this report.

Read: How Ecommerce In India Has Made It Big With Deals And Discount Portals

Infibeam has still maintained e-retailer profile while other contemporaries chose to become marketplaces. Is it a good idea for Infibeam to continue being an e-retailer or should it try marketplace model. To analyze this we have compared Infibeam with Flipkart, who recently became marketplace after functioning as e-retailers for years and Snapdeal. For this analysis we have considered total offers, SKUs (total products), exclusive products and for how many products they are the best seller in terms of prices.

• Infibeam has about 56% less offers as compared with Snapdeal and about 46% less offers than Flipkart. This is the aggregated data for all the four categories.
• Infibeam has 55% lesser product than Snapdeal and about 47% lesser than Flipkart.
• Under exclusive products difference is even higher. It has only 29 exclusive products.
• Infibeam is the best seller for 139 SKUs which is about 87% less than Snapdeal and 65% less than Flipkart.
• Marketplace model seems to have given an edge to Snapdeal and Flipkart as it has improved their catalogue. It equipped them to offer more variety to consumers which has definitely helped them increase their conversion rate.

What do you think of Infibeam’s play? Can they survive as an e-retailer or will they need to tweak their model?

Also Read: Building A Trustworthy Ecommerce Website

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.