At a time when established brands are feeling the heat from the fast growing e-commerce players, domestic traders have joined hands with leading online marketplace eBay to upgrade and train themselves to use online marketplace as an additional tool for expanding their business.
In a first of its kind partnership, apex traders? body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) entered into a memorandum of understanding with eBay to educate and modernise Indian traders by setting up an e-commerce Centre of Excellence (COE) within the CAIT Retail School.
The COE will launch a nationwide campaign among the business community in India to upscale the traders and is being launched jointly by eBay and CAIT to enable Indian traders for retail exports via eBay to 201 countries and national online trade to 4,306 Indian locations.
?CAIT is an excellent partner with its large base of 60 million traders conducting business activities in retail trade of India. We look forward to enabling their member traders for a successful eCommerce business and creating an additional source of livelihood for them by enabling both retail exports of Indian goods and widespread national trade,? said Latif Nathani, MD, eBay India.
Traders, who till date have vehemently opposed e-tailing, say that a model like eBay could provide them with an international marketplace to sell their products. ?We have been against online companies trying to control the market by marketing their own products. A model like eBay gives us an opportunity to internationally market our products. It’s promoting domestic traders,? said Apoorv Sachdeva, a hosiery trader.
The US-based online marketplace, which has been present in India for nine years, has over 2.1 million active users across 4,306 cities.
Praveen Khandelwal, national secretary general, CAIT, said, ?The strategy of providing education and awareness among the trading community will result into an effective eCommerce marketplace to our member traders to extend their customer base beyond their city and reach consumers worldwide as well as across India.?