Written By Simon Mundy Clamp down on aggressive discounting and bulk-buying to test groups’ strategies Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. As Indian ecommerce gained momentum in recent years, some local observers wryly cheered the generosity of overseas investors subsidising the shopping of cash-strapped Indian…

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Written By Priyanka Nair Almost a decade ago, Prashant Parameswaran left a comfortable life in the US and returned to India to go back to his roots (quite literally). Parameswaran, who comes from an agrarian background, used to work with Safeway, a popular American supermarket chain. Through the course of his stint, he came to understand the consumer pulse. It was a time when the South American grain quinoa became a rage in the western world and soon acquired superfood status. Brands began cramming quinoa into their products in various shapes and forms. Parameswaran a keen trend observer asked himself,…

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How do we bring plants like kamranga, ambadi or kachnar in vogue? Written By We were visiting the sites in Kamrup district in Assam where the Centre for Microfinance and Livelihoods was implementing a project to enhance tribal livelihoods. We were in the backyard of a Rabha tribal family. Mango, Assam lemon plants and pepper creepers on areca nut trees were being promoted. In the yard, I spotted a number of yellow-red fruits lying on the ground. When I enquired, they brought a raw, green fruit. It was very tasty, with a mild sweet-and-sour taste. I had never seen it…

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Flipkart's refurbished goods marketplace 2GUD will compete with similar platforms run by Quikr, OLX, GreenDust, Reboot, Togofogo, Overcart, Shopclues and Amazon. Written By Sulekha Nair What do most people do when they upgrade their phones or buy a new laptop? They sell the old via platforms for refurbished goods. The most-sold items online in the refurbished category are smartphones, laptops, headphones, watches, small appliances and Kindle e-readers, to name a few. The refurbished goods market in India will be worth an estimated $20 billion in the next five to six years. Smartphones, the most popular product in the refurbished category,…

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Written BySuneera Tandon Earlier this month, IKEA arrived in India with a 400,000 square feet store, 7,500 products, and big expansion plans. But it left out one key thing: its iconic print catalogue. The 300-page catalogue is a shopper’s go-to guide for the entire product range that the world’s largest furniture retailer sells. The 2018 IKEA catalogue has over 200 million printed copies, ranking it alongside the Bible, the Koran, and the Harry Potter series as one of the world’s most-distributed books. Source: qz

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