Online sites shake up hidebound retailing in India

[unhappycamper]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/08/14/3330100/online-sites-shake-up-hidebound.html?sp=/99/261/

Online sites shake up hidebound retailing in India
By KAY JOHNSON
AP Business Writer
August 14, 2014 Updated 16 minutes ago

MUMBAI, India — Finding a way into India's vast but vexing market has long frustrated foreign retailers. Now, overseas investors are pouring billions of dollars into e-commerce ventures that are circumventing the barriers holding back retail powers such as Wal-Mart and Ikea.

Some investors see India as the world's next big e-commerce opportunity, with the upcoming mammoth public stock offering of Chinese online giant Alibaba hinting at the potential.

Online shopping is still in its infancy in India at $2.3 billion of an overall $421 billion retail market in 2013, according to research firm Crisil. But it is growing fast and the potential of reaching a mostly untapped market of 1.2 billion people has sparked a funding-and-expansion arms race.

Flipkart, a Bangalore-based company founded in 2007 by two former Amazon employees, last month announced it had raised $1 billion in mostly foreign capital after building its registered users to 22 million.

[pscot]

1. *hidebound retailing

*The kind where lots of local people employ other local people to provide the goods and services required by local people on a daily basis.