‘Digital does not have boundaries; brands can have a presence overseas’

India recently opened up online marketplace e-commerce for foreign retailers. As competition heats up, there are concerns on whether e-commerce players can afford to offer deep discounts in the new regime.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV India, Infibeam Managing Director Vishal Mehta said the company has to build up its own marketplace that allows merchants to set up their own destinations. Infibeam is now acting as a registry for a top-level domain called dot triple-o (.ooo) that offers an alternative to merchants and start-ups to build their own brands.

We have invested in certain strategic opportunities so that it allows us to attract more and more merchants to be able to utilise our framework. We realised that a lot of merchants don’t get the name they want. So in a dotcom (URL) if you try to find your name maybe you don’t get that. So we became a registry for a top-level domain called dot triple-o (.ooo) so that merchants can use that as an alternative should they want to.

It is generic and as a result it becomes an opportunity for them to build their own brands. For a lot of start-ups as well, it would help — sometimes you change the name just because you can’t get the .com URL. So we actually get that merchant at a very early stage. It becomes an opportunity for us to provide our infrastructure and build up our market infrastructure for such merchants as well and that allows us to keep on going.

The international market is also a growth driver, which we have identified. What we also realise is that digital does not have boundaries, and brands and merchants have presence overseas. And we would like to provide that infrastructure to merchants overseas as well.

We have done that in the past few quarters. So we have expanded in Middle East and we would like to identify that as an important growth driver for us.

The Centre recently allowed 100 per cent FDI in online marketplace e-commerce. What kind of opportunity do you see from this policy change? Also, experts say deep discounting will be affected now. Do you see that as a cause of concern going forward now that you will have to cut down on discounts?

As far as this announcement of 100 per cent FDI in marketplace e-commerce is concerned, I think there are some riders. I think we have to follow those riders.

We have seen in the past that there have been marketplaces and they have been operating as well. I think that merchants typically may potentially get an opportunity where there will be more consumption.

As in the past few years we have noticed, as consumption happens online, more and more destinations will also come up. We have to build our marketplace that allows them to set up their own destinations. So we will have to see what that potentially means in terms of business models.

I think there is clarity in the definition now on what ‘e-commerce marketplace’ means. So that is a good thing as it makes it much more clear in terms of any investment that comes in this country to be able to go back and figure out the business model and see how that works.

So it is yet to be seen what that potential means in terms of other specifics.