Mouse eRetail Pvt Ltd, yet another e-commerce startup based out of Bangalore, had launched a horizontal e-commerce service - Mouse-e.com - five months back; and has just announced that it has just been successful in raising an angel investment to the tune of Rs.1-crore from an anonymous private investor (or may be multiple investors). And if that wasn't enough, as per the company sources (and as reported by Business Standard), it is currently in talks with a couple of Venture Capitalists to bag an investment worth up to $5-million by June this year; the funds will be used first to expand across the country and aggressively cover the top 130 cities, followed by a penetration in the tier-II and tier-III cities segment.

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Karnal, Haryana based Liberty Group, which started catering to the domestic Indian market in the early 80s, has just launched an web-store - Liberty Shoes Online, offering a wide range of its footwear and accessories for men, women and kids. (Although you will find products segregated on the basis of categories as well - school, sports, formal-wear etc.  - that is something which has been put as a sub-text and not highlighted at all. The only three segments a users gets to see once he/she first visits the site are - Men, Women and Kids. More on this later.)

 

Liberty is not a brand coming onto the e-commerce wagon too slow, too late; it already has quite an extensive online presence via traditional e-commerce sites in footwear category (BeStylish.com) or traditional wide-ranged shopping category (Myntra.com). Through this new sales channel introduced, the company targets to ship an average of 50 orders on a daily basis in the initial months, and hopes to grow at a rate of 100% year-on-year for the first three years. As per company reports, the site seems to have received a good traction from consumers since its soft launch in 2011.

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After Flipkart, its Infibeam’s turn to launch its very own in-house courier/delivery service - Infibeam Logistics. Infibeam, one of the prominent online retailers, has just launched its last-mile delivery channel for products customers are placing orders for online. The service seems to be just a soft-release/pilot test right now, with operations restricted to Delhi-NCR region, but it seems that the company is seriously looking into this particular aspect of logistics. They are trying to widen the last-mile delivery network by hiring more delivery agents, and there are plans to expand to other cities in India starting with major hubs like Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.

The service will be catering to both aspects of last-mile physical support – delivery as well as payment collection from users who had opted for the Cash-on-Delivery option. Flipkart had introduced the in-house service some time back, and it has been really good for them – both for logistics, as well as creating a buzz given the uniformed delivery agents. The ads that you see in Delhi metro, on Airport and in movie theatres is also circling around this theme.

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A $10-billion e-commerce market - thats how companies see the Indian market. So that goes out to explain why most of the startups lately have been in the e-commerce segment. But here is the kicker, now that this $10-billion cashcow is turning the heads of the senior executives at the seattle based e-commerce megagiant, Amazon, there ought to be some disturbance in the kids-camp of Indian e-commerce players. Because, thats what they are - a bunch of kids when it comes to Amazon. While the biggest e-commerce player in India, Flipkart is valued at a whooping $200-million, it is still light years away from the $95-billion valuation Amazon can mightily boast of!

Things have been pretty riled up in the Amazon camp as well - first the proposed* launch of a mighty cheap android-based tablet to give a tough fight to the market dominance of Apple Inc's iPad, followed by a complete redesign of the Amazon website (to be made live for users worldwide soon) and now the distinctive beacon signalling its intention of making an entry with splash in the much prospective Indian e-commerce market - I've got to say, the folks have been keeping themselves pretty busy.

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