Indian e-commerce start-ups are reportedly keen to enter Chinese markets through China's largest search engine company. Several of India's budding and established firms, including Zomato, BookMyShow and BigBasket, are aiming of extending their services in China.
One of China's largest search engine companies Baidu stressed on the huge business opportunities for the Indian marketing firms. A spokesperson from Baidu said that they are planning to invest more resources in the Indian marketing firms, thus extending their services to over wide range of customers; however, Baidu Inc. did not disclose its investment schedule or the capital to be invested.
Zomato is an established food search website that holds information of more than 1 million restaurants globally. The co-founder and CEO of Zomato, Deepinder Goyal, have expressed his interest over expanding their services in Southeast Asia and China. BookMyShow, one of the well-established online ticket providers in India, and BigBasket, the leading online supermarket cum grocery store, has also followed suit.
"The growth of India ecommerce remains strong, tracking our expectations of reaching $35 billion by 2019," reported Nomura, Japans leading research institute. According to Nomura, the festive sale and discount sale season of China stimulated some Indian e-commerce firms to invest in their markets.
The huge potential of China's marketplace continues to attract investors around the globe, including Alibaba and Softbank. Snapdeal, a leading online trading company in India, gained $500 million of investments from Alibaba, Foxconn and Softbank in August 2015. Alibaba and Ant Financial of China have also acquired stakes from Paytm, an Indian internet payment service provider.
"India is an important emerging market with strong e-commerce potential ... This investment will further expand Alibaba Group's global footprint to India's thriving mobile commerce market," CEO of Alibaba Daniel Zhang said in his statement.