Indian E-Commerce: From convenience to burden

E-Commerce was being seen as a big game changer in India in the last decade, till this started changing over the last 1 year. Now everybody seems to be running and squabbling to keep their business afloat.

Did this happen just over the last few months. Or we were just blind to simply ignore all the signs so far.

With the funding drying up and investors asking for profitability, or atleast a path to profitability, the E-commerce players don't know where to look. Coz they never thought that way. Money wasn't going to come on it's own. :-) That's what happens when you just copy a working model fro elsewhere without understanding the local differences.

The pressure mounting, different players are doing different things to try and limit the losses (still they are not into the earn some money mode). They still do not understand the local differences. to be specific, how the sellers work, what the consumer behaviour is, the impact of cost of capital and hence the margins, the taxation difference between the country they copy from (read USA) to the country they are implementing (read India) and so on...

So, to limit losses, some players start charging the sellers more commission on each sale, some start charging for the return shipping, reducing the time limit for return, some go to the extent of being a pain for the consumers.

The later (being a pain) is snapdeals latest announcement of asking the consumers to furnish a document from the authorized service center certifying the product is defective. applies more so for electronic goods like mobiles, TV, laptops etc. This goes on to show the total lack of understanding of consumer behavior and not thinking through the decision and its impact on consumer. Forget what it will do to it's sales and reputation.

Why does one buy online? cost difference and convenience. With the new regulations prohibiting deep discounting, there is little cost difference. So Lets talk about convenience. Convenience means anybody can buy it anywhere, anytime.

Imagine you are in Mumbai or Delhi. How many
stores can you buy a samsung mobile from? Thousands. In your vicinity, close to your office or home, you may still find 2 dozen or more. And god forbid, something isn't right with the mobile and you need to get the document from the service center, how many do you have? Less than half a dozen. Imagine the time, effort and energy you will put in to procure the document (not to mention the fuel you will burn).

That's the rosy picture. Imagine you are in a small town or a village in Chattisgarh or Manipur. Where do you go looking for the service center? E-Commerce provided an anytime anywhere accessibility to all to buy. But mindless policies like these will turn E-commerce from a convenience to a burden. From a delight to such a pain. For All.

Recently, ASSOCHAM published a report, saying 93% of MBA graduates are unemployable.
That's some outrageous claim. Or is it not? Are these the only outrageous findings or there's a lot more, to which we are simply ignorant? We will come to that a bit later. But first let's take  look at the 93% MBA waste.

The year 2015 saw 5,20,000 students enroll for MBA in 5,500 institutes. The number is far more if you include unregistered MBA institutes, which have appeared like Kirana Stores over the years, all over the country. This number was 3,60,000 in 2013. Does the industry even need so many more Managers every years? There already are the millions who are have graduated in the previous years? Is there the space and the need for so many more?

Assuming there's enough job creation to absorb these fresh managers. Who are they going to manage? Majority of these graduates have 'zero' experience. Of anything. All they have done is study. School, undergrad. graduation. (We will talk about the quality of education a bit later) What do they know about the industry? Whatever industry, sector, job function they join, they have zero practical knowledge. Barring a few who did internship somewhere- who may have greater than zero knowledge. What they gather as interns is again debatable, based on where, for how long they intern and do what in the short duration.

In addition to having no knowledge, these fresh MBA graduates; with a strong desire to become Business Managers and Administrators; have no skills or experience managing people, situations. Many can't even get out their college environment and have serious issues adapting to the culture of professionals and living up to the expectations.

Let's talk about the quality. Who is teaching these MBA students?  Mostly Academicians... And even at that- unaccomplished academicians. In many institutes; students who complete their degree this year, start teaching the students of first year from the next batch. More so, when the students do not attend many lectures and Institutes fail to or do not desire to enforce strict attendance. In such a scenario, its highly questionable what have they gained in these 2 years that they become capable of imparting knowledge to freshers.

The education is mostly theoretical, with little or no reference to actual industry practices. This, in a situation where 99% of MBA graduates join the corporate world, is shocking. Rarely do we find people with industrial background or from the corporate world teaching. 


To make the situation worse, even the students are sub-standard. This is partly because of poor basic educational foundation and partly because of their caliber itself being low. The institutes are not helping the situation either by trying to filter out the quality. Instead, they are busy cashing in, creating and filling more and more seats. Results, MBA candidates joining are neither sharp nor keen on learning. Most expect only the MBA degree, a certification, that they can show in job interviews/write on their resumes. They don't seek knowledge or experience from MBA.


So why is there a rush to do MBA? or M.Tech? or any masters? Just because they need a degree. A sheet of paper attesting that they have attended college, pursuing some studies (and successfully completing- by whatever standards). There was a time when finishing schooling used to be an achievement. Then people started pursuing graduation. Being just B.Tech or BA was enough. Now everybody wants to do MBA or some other masters. Not because they want to do it. But because, everyone else is doing it. Where does this stop? Continuing at this rate, very soon we will have every student that enrolls for primary education, stop his academic pursuit only after he has completed his PhD, needless to say, with zero experience.

What do all these people do? The MBA in finance, marketing, operations. Most end up taking up a job for as less as Rs 8,000-10,000 a month; if they are lucky enough to find jobs. A security guard at a mall, with no education beyond school earns as much.

The situation is generally the same in other bachelors and masters degrees as well. Most of the engineers; mechanical, chemical, electronics, telecommunication, computers, ..... and all the others; usually end up working in some back-end offices, customer service, BPO, KPO organization. Doing nothing what they had studied. Implementing or putting to use anything they learned s far. This is another ugly truth, a fact, waiting to be discovered and published in another such report.

So where have gone wrong? Why are we producing so many unemployable graduates? Why are we studying all the things we are never going to use or implement? Why is there so much unwarranted emphasis on the degrees we hold? Why does every body want to get so many degrees? Why this mad race? More importantly, what can we do to fix the system?

(press release of the ASSOCHAM report)