Flipkart: Building Trust in Indian Ecommerce
1. Introduction Headquartered in Bengaluru, India, Flipkart was founded in October 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (no relation). Flipkart began its ecommerce journey retailing books online, and in June 2012, attained ‘unicorn’ status when it was valued at US$1bn.[1] Since then, Flipkart has secured funding from investors such as Tiger Global, SoftBank and […]
Shopee: Localizing Ecommerce in Southeast Asia and Taiwan
1. Introduction Shopee is an online shopping platform in Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. It is operated by Sea Ltd, an internet platform company that also runs digital entertainment platform Garena, and digital financial service AirPay. Shopee prides itself on being extremely localized for each of its markets, providing buyers and sellers […]
Baidu: The Gateway to China’s Online Communities
1. Introduction Baidu is China’s most popular search engine, and is a part of the larger entity Baidu, Inc. Established in 2000, Baidu, Inc is one of the leading internet service companies in China, and has been commonly referred to as China’s answer to Google. Baidu’s most successful service, Baidu Search, is the second largest […]
Understanding WeChat: An Overview of China’s Social, Payment and Messaging Giant
1. Introduction Launched in 2011, WeChat (Weixin (微信) in Mandarin) started off as a messaging app that has since evolved into a social networking and ecommerce behemoth. Widely popular in China, on average, WeChat boasts 902 million daily logged in users, with around 38 billion messages sent daily.[1] Starting as parent company Tencent’s mobile equivalent […]