INDIA – Flipkart, the Bengaluru based ecommerce company will from August 2018 shut down eBay.in, a business-to-consumer platform it had been operating for the last one year in partnership with eBay, reported ET Retail.

Flipkart will launch a new platform in India to sell refurbished goods after eBay announced in May it had ended its strategic partnership with Flipkart and that it plans to relaunch eBay India with a differentiated offering.

Customer transactions on eBay will end on August 14 as a way to transition buyers to its new platform which is yet to be launched.

All the eBay sellers and customers will be migrated to the new platform over time, something the firm will ensure enhances both efficiency and customer-seller experience.

The new platform will be operated as an independent brand targeting specific audience, different in proposition value compared to Flipkart.

“Based on our learnings at eBay.in, we have built a brand new value platform launching with refurbished goods, a large market which is predominantly unorganised,” said chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy in an email to employees.

“With Flipkart’s customer base, and F1 Info Solutions & Services in our group portfolio, I believe that we can solve the key barriers to refurbished trust & convenience at scale.”

Turbulent retail space

eBay entered the Indian market in 2014 with great determination when it acquired the News Corp-backed Bazee.com but met a stormy market dominated by Flipkart and Amazon India.

In 2013, it picked a significant stake in Delhi-based online retailer Snapdeal but wrote down a US$61million investment in the e-retailer in February this year.

Its operations in India were therefore acquired by Flipkart last year in a US$1.4 billion round of funding led by Microsoft, Tencent, and eBay.

Then, eBay invested about US$500 million in Flipkart and got another US$220 million worth of shares from selling its India business to Flipkart.