Flipkart close eBay India with no replacement marketplaces launched

Flipkart has shut down eBay India with no replacement site other than a promise that one day they’ll launch a replacement shopping experience. That’s not much help for millions of eBay buyers and sellers who habitually used eBay, especially as eBay India was an ideal site for second hand items.

A message on the site simply reads “Sorry, you can no longer transact on eBay.in. But not to worry, Flipkart will introduce a brand-new shopping experience soon. Stay tuned“.

eBay have indicated that sooner or later they too will introduce a new shopping experience as they reclaim the eBay.in URL and rights. However eBay intend to focus on cross border opportunities.

“The company plans to relaunch eBay India with a differentiated offer to focus initially on the cross-border trade opportunity”
– eBay

One has to ask how promising eBay’s plans for India are having pretty much given up on the domestic market. eBay threw their lot in with Flipkart aiming to grab the cross border sales and now, with Walmart buying into Flipkart and eBay tearing up their agreement they’re left with no platform, no buyers and sellers and no existing cross border trade to build on.

Since announcing that they would relaunch eBay India with a cross border trade opportunity, eBay have gone silent on their plans for the continent and yet to reveal their plans. Their problem remains that the longer they wait the harder it will be to relaunch eBay India and regardless, many Indians used the site for domestic sale and the cross border opportunity is of relatively less interest. Imagine for example that eBay.co.uk was a site where you couldn’t sell to UK shoppers but could only sell overseas. It’s going to be an uphill struggle to gain traction while Flipkart forge ahead with Walmart and Amazon ramp up operations in India.