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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

Flipkart is losing to Amazon.in right now. I think that Softbank is smartly offloading a possible loser to Walmart/Google here at close to peak valuation. Maybe Google/Walmart can turn it around though.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/flipkart.com

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.in

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This the wrong metric to look at. If you look at number of app reviews per week on Appannie, Flipkart averages roughly twice the number of reviews as Amazon with better average rating (4.6 vs 3.9). ~85% of India only accesses internet via mobile.

I know very little about which metrics to look at but this seems like an even more wrong metric to go by. What does number of app reviews prove other than that the app is good at pushing people to review it?

Both apps don't urge users to go review their app on the play store. On this assumption, since both serve similar demographic of users - the average number of reviews written per week has to have a strong correlation to number of new users.

I think you're right. Flipkart is very aggressive with pushing their app. At one point they converted their website into just a big link to the play store. I never bought a single item from flipkart after that. I'd rather pay more than do business with a user-hostile company.

That just means flipkart is better at driving reviews, potentially with some bonus for doing so

Yeah, a lot of apps do this by being persistent. Though it doesn't explain the low rating.

That's a wrong metric as well because average order size and lifetime customer value will vary a lot in India.

From anecdotal evidence, Amazon seems to be more popular among younger crowds in big cities who are likely to spend more and often

That is a really interesting thought. How is website ranking a wrong metric compared to app reviews? Especially considering once upon a time Flipkart tried ditching their website and going app only.

Because a lot of the internet access(user count) in India is coming from smartphones on 4G. So, it might be that most ecommerce purchases are from apps not the site itself.

Alexa rank isn't a very accurate metric and I wouldn't give it much thought. I would focus more on the actual users they have on their ecosystem, demographic, frequency of ordering, etc.

Keep in mind, Alexa.com is an Amazon company so not exactly unbiased.

I feel like Amazon bought Alexa.com so they could use Alexa for Echo devices

They bought it way back in 1999. I've always wondered how much confusion there is internally at Amazon because of the name re-use.

That would have been remarkably forward looking.

Well, this does not give the correct picture on the ground. Flipkart is bigger than amazon here. They have fashion portal called https://myntra.com and new fintech play called PhonePe. They are biggest player in fashion and white goods including smartphones. And smartphones are huge in India. A big percentage (I don't know the split) of smartphones sold in India gets sold online and majority (50+%) on Flipkart.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/batt...

Just got to flipkart.com and amanzon.in,

see the detailed reviews on a handful of products and see the prices. General Amazon wins.

they may have PhonePe but is that a winner? PayTM dominates.

There is Amazon Pay too.

Just using both sites (on desktop, and yes its a mobile first country) Amazon.in generally beats Flipkart on product selection, price, number of product reviews, and search results.

Can Flipkart succeed? maybe but 2 years from now if they didn't have this buyout I think they would have be a for sure in 2nd place. FK needed Walmart as much as Walmart thinks it needs FK.

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