Alibaba to expand in India

eBay India gets a serious competition - China based Alibaba.com is set to expand aggressively in India.

Alibaba recently raised $1.7 billion via IPO and plans to use ~60% of the fund raised for strategic acquisitions and global expansion.

Alibaba India currently has 340,000 suppliers and is looking to double the number by end of ‘08.

As far as the market is concerned, the Indian e-commerce market is pegged to touch Rs. 9210 crore by end of 2008 and Alibaba is looking for a bigger share of the pie.

eBay India has done fairly well till now and the site receives 2.5 million unique visitors and 30 million page views per month. eBay’s strategy, now is to target the long tail of sellers.Apart from launching TV ads, eBay India recently opened up it’s site for graphical ads for advertisers and has launched online coupons that can be redeemed.

It’d be interesting to see startups (which focus on local deals) like offersforshoppers (which is undergoing site revamp) and mkhoj play in this market.