US-based online retailer eBay is reportedly in talks with ShopClues to acquire the Gurugram-based e-commerce company After announcing its plan to relaunch its India business. Last year, eBay sold its India operations to Flipkart for $200 million, who recently said it will stop using the eBay.in platform. Meanwhile, eBay and ShopClues have both declined to comment on the acquisition reports.
ShopClues is an online marketplace owned by Clues Network Pvt. Ltd. It was established in July 2011 in Silicon Valley by Sanjay Sethi, Sandeep Aggarwal and Radhika Aggarwal. Based in Gurgaon, India, the company claims to have over 6 lakh merchants and 2.8 crore products on its platform, serving over 32,000 pin codes across the country.
ShopClues has recently raised $10 million from existing investors, is itself holding talks with multiple e-commerce companies for a potential sale.
eBay is exploring fresh options to maintain its presence in India and has held talks for a merger with some e-commerce players, including ShopClues.
“We plan to relaunch eBay India with a differentiated offer to focus initially on the cross-border trade opportunity, which we believe is significant and we believe that there is huge growth potential for e-commerce in India and significant opportunity for multiple players to succeed in India’s diverse, domestic market,” informed the eBay spokesperson.
According to the Reports, Flipkart is acquired by Walmart and it is considering to shut down the operations of eBay.in. Flipkart has been operating eBay in India for the past year after it raised a round of $1.4 billion from eBay, Tencent and Microsoft. eBay had then invested $500 million in Flipkart and will exit with $1.1 billion, the news daily reported.
Flipkart is expected to launch a new platform to sell used goods as the firm looks to solve key barriers to refurbish customers’ trust and convenience at scale. The company will be stopping all customer transactions on eBay.in starting August 14, for a smooth transition to the new platform.
Simultaneously, eBay stated that it is looking at a relaunch in India for “cross-border trade play.”