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eBay to expand fashion, lifestyle categories, eyes acquisitions

By Meenakshi Kumar

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American e-commerce giant eBay Inc is looking at expanding its fashion and lifestyle categories and acquiring online fashion retailers. Even though eBay entered the India much before Amazon, it trails behind.

However, eBay’s attempts at acquiring two fashion sites, Fashionara and Rocket Internet-backed Jabong, have failed. The reason behind the talks failing between Jabong and eBay was that the latter wanted Jabong to completely change to a marketplace model that eBay operates. Not deterred or defeated, eBay is still in the market for acquiring fashion e-tailers.

The company is focused on providing a wide selection and choice of products to its 5.2 million buyers. The company already has more than 30 million listings across 2,000 product categories including electronic, lifestyle, media and collectibles. Fashion and lifestyle contribute close to 40 per cent of eBay India’s sales, ranking second only to electronics.

Fashion is one of the fastest growing categories in India’s rapidly growing e-commerce market. In 2014, market leader Flipkart acquired Myntra to shore up its fashion and lifestyle portfolio. Even Amazon has been ramping up its own fashion category with heavy advertising of lifestyle products.

eBay entered the Indian market in 2004 by acquiring auction site bazee.com and was overtaken by late entrants such as Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal. The company posted a revenue of Rs 132.10 crores in FY15 while Flipkart Internet posted a revenue of Rs 772.49 crores in the same period.

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