Tech Toyz special: eBay Battle of the Gadgets 2011

In an exclusive special edition of Tech Toyz, Suresh Venkatesh discusses the results of the eBay census 2011, a big part of which is the battle of the gadgets.

To discuss the census are Country Manager eBay India Muralikrishnan B;  Online Director for Forbes India Deepak Ajwani; the CEO of Infoedge Hitesh Oberoi and co-anchor of Tech Toyz Ankit Vengurlekar. Below is an edited transcript of their interviews. Watch the accompanying videos for more. Q: Why is eBay in the census business? Muralikrishnan: We are not exactly in the census business but the eBay India Census Report is now in its fourth annual edition. We take actual transactions that consumers do online on eBay. This is actual transaction data spread across all the 28 states and 7 union territories in India. We have deep insights on what India actually shops for online. We have trend on what happens in all the cities, the top states, the top bought products, the top sold products and also covering imports and exports. Q: The top five states that head e-commerce are Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Do you get high levels of readership from these states as well? Do you see consumption patterns that are concomitant with e-commerce patterns? Ajwani: Yes, Maharashtra takes care of Bombay and Delhi is again in a metro. It does concur to the reading patterns online for Forbes India, definitely. Q: From where you sit in your business, what does this tell you about the kind of penetration that we are seeing of the internet across India? Oberoi: Internet penetration has been increasing over the years. However, the truth is it is largely confined to some states in western India, northern India and southern India. There is very little internet penetration in eastern India and in states like UP. The reason is very clear, because these states are a low per capita income. Even telecom penetration in these states is actually lower than in other states. Q: What kind of internet patterns are you observing in West Bengal? Vengurlekar: I was trying to open the census report that eBay published for 2011. All I can say is I started that at 6:15 pm and it hasn