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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