Kiss n' make-up: Sony, Samsung et al set to resume online sales in India

If you are in India, you can’t underestimate the power of e-commerce. That seems to be the message big consumer companies are getting. Many of these companies had banned online sales of their products after Flipkart’s Big Billion Day sale kicked up controversy over predatory pricing.

According to a report in The Economic Times today, companies such as Sony and Panasonic are now cosying up to the e-commerce portals. These companies are “encouraging trade partners to sell their products online”, the report said.

The reason? Pressure from their headquarters, says the report citing two unnamed industry executives. Clearly, the bosses do not want their companies to miss the e-commerce bus in India.

Sony has tied up with Snapdeal to appoint its dealers as sellers on the site. This is aimed at ensuring making online sales on par with offline ones. It will also help the company ensure that the product being sold is not fake and also offer warranty.

“This (the tie-up with Snapdeal) will ensure customers would face no issues with product availability, serviceability and that pricing is stable,” Sunil Nayyar, sales head at Sony India, has been quoted as saying in the ET report.

Warranty has been a contentious issue between the consumer durable companies and online retailers. After the Big Billion Day sale, which brought steep discounts being offfered on the online sites into the limelight, these companies had said that they would not offer warranty to products that are sold online.

One of the senior executive with a company had even termed these sites as “unauthorised channel partners”, in this ToI report . He said buying from the e-commerce sites was like buying from the grey market, justifying his company’s decision to not offer warranty.

However, the companies seem to find a way out to deal with the “market distorting” discounts offered by e-commerce companies. As per the ET report, Sony will have similar tie-ups with Amazon and Flipkart too. Panasonic is already selling its products online through their trading partners. Samsung is also likely to follow suit, says the ET report.

“We took the decision due to encouraging reach of online marketplaces and increasing trend of online shopping,” Panasonic MD Manish Sharma has told the newspaper justifying the company’s decision to take online sales route.

According to a report by research firm eMarketer , online retail sales in India are likely to surge 45 percent to $7.69 billion in 2015. Technopak has estimated that the Indian e-commerce segment will hit $32 billion in size by 2020.

Nobody would want to miss this opportunity.