India's biggest Tata Group launched an e-commerce venture yesterday, the group said it developed its Tata Cliq website over a year and a half at a cost of "several hundred million dollars" to be a marketplace for in house and partner companies to sell apparel and electronics.
The move is in line with a second phase in Indian e-commerce development, with the some of the country's oldest and largest corporations entering an industry established in the last five years by startups Snapdeal and Flipkart Online Services Pvt Ltd [IPO-FLPK.N].
The market also welcomed global e-commerce firm Amazon.com, Inc in 2013, which has invested over $2 billion for growth. Chief Executive Ashutosh Pandey of Tata Unistore, parent of the operator of Tata Cliq said, "We don't want to get into the discount wars, we want to serve customers with great products and build a sustainable business,
" To keep costs in check, Pandey said Tata would not use its money to establish a large number of warehouses like other ecommerce players have done, and would instead build inventory networks around existing store locations owned by group partners.