Ecommerce Coalition resists Jack Ma’s views on Indian e-commerce sector

The Ecommerce Coalition representing Ecommerce companies in India reacted to the reported statements of Chinese entrepreneur Mr Jack Ma, who just concluded his India visit, with trepidation and cautioned that his views come from the experience of China which was a fully developed manufacturing economy looking for global markets by the time Alibaba pioneered its B2B portal.

Zuhaib Khan- Secretary, Ecommerce Coalition & CEO of Shopatplaces.com said that “India should not desire to be a market for Chinese producers but rather a manufacturer looking at China and other global markets to sell its produce. B2B Ecommerce works well for Alibaba in the context of an outward oriented portal seeking to make inroad into Indian and other markets and not the other way around. While it is encouraging to see Mr Ma interest in India, it must not be forgotten that Alibaba has been the sourcing choice for imports for a number of Indian distributors and a major entrepotfor Chinese goods into India.”

“To suggest that the Chinese model is more appropriate to India is to make a serious error in judgment when in fact it is the B2C model that collaborates with the intentions of the Indian Government towards making India a manufacturing destination”, he added.

B2B Ecommerce has been always available to Indian manufacturers and has had no salutary  effect on manufacturing per se. B2C Ecommerce brings the potential of aggregative manufacturing, volumes and economies of scale to existing and new MSMEs.

“It is B2C ecommerce which holds promise as a complementary model to induce expansion of the manufacturing sector and sustaining large scale small scale industrial activity of the kind visualized in the Government’s Make in India scheme” Khan added further.