Amazon China CEO: B2C is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

B2C in China is big business, and it’s a big business that Alibaba’s Tmall is currently kind of dominating. Taking a gander at the chart below might be intimidating for anyone running a B2C site in China that isn’t Tmall, but it doesn’t phase Amazon China’s CEO Wang Hanhua. In an interview with Southern Metropolis, he said that B2C is a marathon, not a sprint:

I’m most concerned with whether or not you’ve prepared for the marathon, whether or not you will be the final victor. When there are three to five companies left in the market at the end, will you be one of them?

Wang’s lack of fear isn’t entirely misplaced. True, Amazon China currently commands a paltry 2.2 percent of the market (by total revenue share, according to these numbers). But that giant block of “others” — hundreds of tiny sites that command only fractions of a percentage point of the market — indicates that the market is likely to consolidate and fluctuate in the coming years.

Wang says that Amazon China hasn’t yet “reached its peak” — which of course is what any good CEO would say — but personally, I’m hoping he’s right. Amazon China doesn’t offer the selection of some other online B2C malls, but it’s easy-to-navigate customer service and the fact that it allows payment by COD for all items (yes, some other sites do this too) has made it my personal favorite B2C site, so I’m hoping it sticks around.

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Electronic Waste in India: 450% growth in 7 years, 10 states contribute 70% of E-Waste

The tremendous growth and technological advancements in the electronic data management and communications have spurred economic growth and improved living standards. However, the dependence on electronic products has given rise to a new area of concern i.e. electronic waste. The high rates of obsolescence of products in use in the domestic sector such as TVs, refrigerators, washing machines and mobile phones as well as computers give rise to substantial E-waste generation and this is going up steadily, given the high growth rates in these segments.

As per a report by Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), India generated 1,46,800 tonnes of E-waste was generated in the year 2005 and the number is expected to reach 8,00,000 tonnes by 2012. Also, 65 cities generated more than 60% of the total E-waste generated in India. What’s alarming is that 10 states generate 70% of the total e-waste generated in India.

Top E-waste generating cities in India are Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune, Surat and Nagpur. And top E-waste generating states in India are Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal, Delhi, Karnataka, MP and Punjab.

A 2010 report by UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) forecasted that by 2020, E-waste in India from old computers will jump by 500 percent from 2007 and discarded mobile phones, televisions will add to the numbers.

The draft notification of E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules was published by MoEF in May 2010. The concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)is introduced in these proposed rules as this strategy makes the producer (of electronic/electric equipment) responsible for the entire life cycle of the product, including its recycling and final disposal.

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Tokopedia closes another round of investment, brings Japan’s netprice into Indonesian e-commerce space

Photo: Navinot

Tokopedia, an Indonesian based startup, announced its new round of investment from netprice.com. The President and group CEO of netprice.com, Teruhide Sato will also join Tokopedia’s board.

With more than 16,000 merchants, Tokopedia, an ecommerce platform that allows Indonesian individuals and small-to-mid-sized business owners to start their online stores, closed another round of investment from netprice.com, a Japanese leader in the ecommerce industry. Prior to this investment, Tokopedia had also previously received funding from PT. Indonusa Dwitama, East Ventures, and Cyber Agent Ventures.

For a better idea of what Tokopedia is, you can think of it as eBay for Indonesia. With this fund injection, Tokopedia says in the press release that they will continue to maintain their rapid growth, as well as to accelerate and expand their business. Other than that, Teruhide Sato, President and Group CEO of netprice.com, Ltd. will also join Tokopedia’s board, while both co-founders of Tokopedia, Leontinus Alpha Edison and William Tanuwijaya, will continue to lead and maintain the full operational responsibilities of Tokopedia.

“netprice sees strong potential in Indonesia’s e-commerce industry, and we want to create a strong base of e-commerce business in Indonesia through this investment,” stated Teruhide Sato whom has been in the e-commerce industry for 15 years. Besides his passion for e-commerce, Teruhide Sato is also active in angel investment and incubation projects around the world with his involvement in Open Network Lab.

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Tokopedia closes another round of investment, brings Japan’s netprice into Indonesian e-commerce space

Photo: Navinot

Tokopedia, an Indonesian based startup, announced its new round of investment from netprice.com. The President and group CEO of netprice.com, Teruhide Sato will also join Tokopedia’s board.

With more than 16,000 merchants, Tokopedia, an ecommerce platform that allows Indonesian individuals and small-to-mid-sized business owners to start their online stores, closed another round of investment from netprice.com, a Japanese leader in the ecommerce industry. Prior to this investment, Tokopedia had also previously received funding from PT. Indonusa Dwitama, East Ventures, and Cyber Agent Ventures.

For a better idea of what Tokopedia is, you can think of it as eBay for Indonesia. With this fund injection, Tokopedia says in the press release that they will continue to maintain their rapid growth, as well as to accelerate and expand their business. Other than that, Teruhide Sato, President and Group CEO of netprice.com, Ltd. will also join Tokopedia’s board, while both co-founders of Tokopedia, Leontinus Alpha Edison and William Tanuwijaya, will continue to lead and maintain the full operational responsibilities of Tokopedia.

“netprice sees strong potential in Indonesia’s e-commerce industry, and we want to create a strong base of e-commerce business in Indonesia through this investment,” stated Teruhide Sato whom has been in the e-commerce industry for 15 years. Besides his passion for e-commerce, Teruhide Sato is also active in angel investment and incubation projects around the world with his involvement in Open Network Lab.

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The Sina Weibo App is Very, Very Addictive!

The real-name saga is ongoing in China, but I’m still able to tweet via Sina Weibo through its iPhone app. I have to admit that the real-name controversy keeps me going back to Weibo recently to check if the rule has been enforced or if I really need to put in my real identity. So while on the app I’m either weibo-ing or gaming.

Its iPhone app is like a mini social mobile gaming center. The games are pretty straight forward, much like the games you play on Mobage or GREE. But the ease of social communication makes it special. I usually weibo and then head over to the game section and then back to weibo. My favorite game is poker, which is usually fast and quite addictive to play. The Three Kingdom game looks interesting but is slow to load for me.

I’m also pretty impressed by how Sina Weibo has evolved along the way, adding more features to make the service more rich and meaty, but yet not cluttered. With mobile games and also pages for brands, Sina Weibo now looks more like a Facebook than a Twitter, if you really must compare it with Western services. It makes me wonder if Twitter might have plans to do something similar. Sina Weibo is better than Twitter in many ways. The only thing that kept me staying on Twitter is my friends.

The Sina Weibo iPhone app is more than just weibo and games, though. Below are two other features that I find myself coming back to:

1. Most commented/reposted: Tapping on this feature allows you to see all the weibos/tweets which are the most commented/reposted. If you don’t know what to do when you’re stuck in a taxi, reading the comments is a sure way to suck up your time and also keep yourself updated.

2. WeiboApps: There’s an app store within the app, and it isn’t just promoting Sina’s apps. That’s also one of the places I go to check for the latest and coolest app in China.

It is also worth mentioning the Microdata feature which helps to analyze your weibo influence.

So that’s a brief run through on the features on Sina Weibo iPhone. Of course, as with Twitter, there are third-party alternative apps for Weibo that you might prefer, offering a more minimal UI – and in one case an English interface.

If you’re curious about what’s going on in China, Sina Weibo is one of best avenues to explore. While the app interface is in English, the content is 99.99 percent in Chinese. So it’s still very much a Chinese-language-only experience, unfortunately.

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Tokopedia Receives Funding From Netprice

Last year, Tokopedia received investment from CyberAgent Ventures. And today, we just learned that it has received a new round of investment from Netprice.com, Ltd. Investment details are undisclosed. The investment will also see Teruhide Sato, president and group CEO of Netprice, joining Tokopedia as a board member. Sato has 15 years of experience in e-commerce and also has been angel investing through Open Network Lab. Prior to this round, investors who have backed Tokopedia are PT. Indonusa Dwitama, East Ventures, and CyberAgent Ventures.

When questioned on some of the service’s key metrics, co-founder William Tanuwijaya told us that Tokopedia.com has 16,390 active merchants, more than 800,000 visitors per month, and generated 9.9 Billion IDR (more than US$1 million) worth of transactions in the month of March, 2012. William shared a few more thoughts on the deal:

The main reason why we decided to receive this from Netprice is more [about] Sato-san himself. We’ve met him several times, and I can see that he truly believes in the entrepreneurship and the founder’s energy for company success. He is still a founder/CEO for his own company, and I’ve met with some of his ex-employees and partners who are still in the group but who are also running their own company now, like Taku Takeuchi-san, former CTO of Netprice, who now is the CEO of Brandear.jp; Hiro Maeda-san of Open Network Labs (who still belongs to Netprice Incubation division), Kakiyama-san of Flutterscape, which is a spin-off from the Netprice project; and Nao Ito-san, former head of Netprice president office, and now CEO of Sekaimon.

Those [individuals] are still within the group but are also operating their own company now. It’s more like a collaborative federation instead of corporate empire. Within the group, there’s also Aucfan which is an auction portal. It will be great to learn from different models of e-commerce through this kind of collaborative network.

You can check out more information in the press release below.

Disclosure: Tech in Asia is backed by East Ventures. Please see our ethics statement here.

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Snapdeal acquires Delhi based eSportsbuy

As part of expanding into product business, Snapdeal has acquired eSportsbuy, a Delhi based startup that sells fitness and sports products online (read our earlier coverage of eSportsbuy).

This is an interesting acquisition for Snapdeal, as the first acquisition – i.e. Grabbon pretty much changed company’s directions (read Snapdeal Story) and helped it move aggressively in deals space. Now that the company is foraying into products and needs a niche segment to cater to, eSportsbuy acquisition will help Snapdeal foray into products, which is not yet exploited by online players.

ET puts the deal size to INR 50-75 crores at an annual revenue of INR 10 crores, i.e. 5X valuation, which is surely on a higher side (and debatable).

Now that Amazon India launch can happen anytime this quarter, expect more consolidation in the industry as players are gearing up to improve the operational efficiency as well as expand into verticals that provide a better margin.

Another player in this industry includes Bangalore based Playgroundonline.

- Data: A Snapshot Of Snapdeal’s Product Business [40% Driven By Tier-II Cities]

- Recommended Read: My seven (hard-hitting) questions to Indian ecommerce businesses

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Instagram for Android Arrives, But Missing Sina Weibo Support

The massively popular Instagram app has just arrived on Android – but, oddly, it is missing the support for Sina Weibo, China’s hottest microblog service, that was added to its iOS version last month.

It’s a surprising omission, but surely Instagram for Android will implement Weibo sharing in due course. And, yes, I did check for the feature’s presence using the same convoluted method that’s required in its iOS app. That involves changing your phone’s interface to its (traditional or simplified) Chinese localization, and then going back into Instagram’s settings. Doing so on my Android phone showed that the Instagram app does have a Chinese text interface, but the Sina Weibo sync option was definitely missing:

This leads me to wonder why such a ludicrous method of adding one sharing service is needed at all. Do we live in such an absolutist world where only people whose phones are in Chinese will want to use Sina Weibo (or for Japanese and Mixi)? Sure, the language change only needs to be made once on your phone so as to set up the Weibo/Mixi sync, and then you can revert back to any language you wish to use with your smartphone – but the whole implementation is a chore that’s out of touch with people in the 21st-century.

Remember that Sina Weibo has lots of users in Hong Kong, and amongst Chinese-Americans and overseas Chinese in general. A good many of those might well be running English or other languages on their iPhones and Androids, and might not realise how on earth to add Weibo sync to Instagram if it doesn’t appear immediately. After all, it’s such a ridiculous way to do it, common sense dictates that it wouldn’t be made such a hassle. Geo-restricting is one of the worst things about the web, and is a huge disservice to one’s users; just give them all the options right there, clear as daylight.

So, it’ll be good to see Sina Weibo pop up in the settings of Instagram for Android – preferably regardless of what language us global citizens are using for our phone interface.

Grab Instagram for Android from the Play Store.

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