Flipkart allows third-party sellers on its website

Avanish Tiwary  

In a bid to bring independent sellers and buyers together, Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd., which runs India’s biggest online shopping portal flipkart.com has launched Flipkart Marketplace. It will virtually bring sellers and buyers at one place from where they can do the transaction. This will mean that a third party merchant can sell his product on Flipkart. “Sellers can list on the site only by invitation. They have to meet our rigorous quality standards, sell only genuine products and follow our customer-friendly guidelines,” said Sachin Bansal, Co-Founder and CEO, Flipkart.com in an e-mail interview. 
Flipkart is trying to leverage its dominance it has in the e-commerce sector. The company says in the last 12 months, more than 80 million unique visitors have visited its website. With this huge user base, this model will help small entrepreneurs as they will get the benefit of accessing it without investing anything. “With the marketplace, smaller players can transact on the same platform as larger established retailers, creating a level playing field. They can also gather valuable business intelligence on competition based on factors such as pricing, offers, deals on the way,” Bansal said. 
At first appearance, Flipkart’s new model seems akin to eBay and Amazon. There are till now 50 sellers listed on Marketplace under the category of books, media and consumer electronics. “We have aggressive plans of scaling up within these categories and will also list sellers in clothes, shoes and other categories soon,” Bansal explained. Flipkart will charge the sellers a commission which starts from three percent and then go up depending on the category and volumes of sales. 
To be sure, there are other players who have already set up a marketplace like business model. Websites like junglee.com, snapdeal.com, tradus.in, etc, are the e-commerce portals who allow third party-sellers on its website. However, Bansal said what Flipkart can offer to its sellers is more than what any other e-commerce website in India can offer. With more players giving space to independent merchants, it will help organise the Indian retail sector which is largely unorganised. 
Flipkart Marketplace website is live at www.sellers.flipkart.com and sellers will have to send an invitation request to the Flipkart Marketplace to be listed.