eBay, the e-commerce site, sees huge growth in traffic to the site via social media and mobile devices.

“There is a huge growth in smartphones and interest of people in social networking sites in the country. More and more people are accessing the Internet through their mobile phones. Our Facebook presence registered 1.8 million fans,” Mr Kashyap Vadapalli, Chief Marketing Officer of eBay India, told Business Line .

Like they share opinions on films and other issues, they will go shopping through the social media. They have started using their mobile phones to check prices at eBay while doing their regular shopping. “They may not buy things immediately. But that is okay. They will do that later. We can convert them in future. Online shopping will be driven by mobiles,” he said.

“Our network of buyers and sellers has been growing significantly in the last three years. While people accessed our site from 1,700 locations in India three years ago to buy or sell products, they are coming to the site from 3,300 locations now,” he said.

Quoting Internet and Mobile Association of India reports, he said e-commerce sales grew to Rs 46,520 crore in 2011 as against Rs 31,600 crore previous year. “About 85 per cent of that is travel-related business, the remaining being transactions in products,” he said.

He said the company maintained an escrow-like process to safeguard the interests of buyers. The money paid by customers will be placed in these accounts in some banks. “We ask them to write to them when they receive the product. We will wait for 10 days for reply. We then wait for four more days. Only then, we will transfer the money to sellers,” he said.

This, however, doesn’t apply to the used products sold on the site.

kurmanath.kanchi@thehindu.co.in

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