HDFC Bank, Google, Reasoning and Aramex together host India's first E-tailing conclave

Company Brief

Bangalore, August 27, 2010

Google, HDFC Bank, Reasoning and Aramex together are pleased to announce the commencement of a series of first Indian E-tailing conclave conferences. The conferences are aimed to enable Indian retailers to overcome various barriers and start leveraging new channels such as the Internet & mobile effectively for increasing their consumer reach & sales. Bangalore will host the first series of this conclave on 31st August, 2010 at The Chancery Pavilion, followed by Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune are likely to host the forthcoming sessions.

The conferences are planned to educate and empower the retailer community about the rapid transformations of the Indian retail industry with the growing adoption of the Internet as a shopping channel among consumers.

Google, HDFC Bank, Reasoning & Aramex together have identified the key obstacles that retailers face today in doing so are, difficult technology, complex payment solutions, lack of understanding of capturing consumers online and the difficulty in managing the logistics of an online business. To provide one stop solution to all Indian retailers these 4 major players are building an eco-system which would help create simple, usable & affordable solutions to address all of these issues. This series of conferences is an effort to make retailers aware of the new market dynamics and to empower them to tackle the common barriers in building their online stores.

While talking about this initiative Rajnish Prabhu, Sr. Vice President, HDFC Bank said, "The rapid penetration of Internet & Mobile over the last decade has led to a drastic change in the economic scenario, especially in India and China. Banks are increasingly functioning as facilitators of e-commerce. We are also noticing a surge in the consumers' preference to use credit cards, debit cards and online banking. The increased adoption of "plastic money" is definitely an indicator of the increasing focus on convenience and e-commerce is just another facet of the same trend. Merchants are responding actively to these trends with an increasing number of HDFC Bank card swipe machine installations across the country. As one of India's largest banks, we are also responding with an active participation in e-commerce by providing end to end solutions to the merchants who want to do commerce online. The Bank has a strategic tie-up with Reasoning (with its innovative e-commerce solutions) to enable us to fulfill the requirements of merchants in the new market place by providing them a strong channel and a strong payment system for reaching to consumers across the Internet, mobile and other new media."

"Through our insights and 3rd party studies it is evident that, search has tremendous impact on both online and offline purchase decisions. With the increasing role of digital media, Indian manufacturers and retailers are yet to taste the success given the unexploited search volumes of various lifestyle, consumer and specialty products. Being the leading Internet search engine, it is our onus to educate and enlighten the retailers to leverage the power of search marketing in order to boost footfalls to physical stores and increase their online sales. We are glad to partner with emerging players like Reasoning to facilitate such awareness programs. Together along with other players of the eco-system we are targeting to offer a 'complete' solution for going online", said Sridhar Seshadri, Head of Online Sales, Google India.

"As part of our ongoing efforts to enable and facilitate e-commerce, we have partnered with HDFC Bank, Google, and Reasoning to create an ecosystem where e-commerce entities can thrive and awareness among consumers is raised. We are glad to lend our support, expertise and logistics network to these efforts" – Percy Avary, Country Head (India), Aramex International

"We are very up-beat about bringing some real value to Indian retailers with these strategic partnerships with market leading players such as HDFC Bank, Google & Aramex. Their expertise and cohesive product lines along with our solutions for establishing & managing online stores will go a long way in helping retailers in setting up their e-commerce initiatives at an affordable cost. The key problem earlier was that a small or medium sized retailer had to deal with 4 or 5 different solution providers to build an online store. Now with all the key components available together as a joint offering from our partners, we should be able to make things very easy for the retailers & effectively set them up for success. With this series of e-commerce conclave we are sure that we will be able to provide one stop solution to all Indian retailers to expand their consumer reach and increase sale." Said Anubhav Kushwaha, VP-Business Strategy & Alliances, Reasoning.

For further information, please contact:

Percept Profile

Manisha Keshwa

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Email: manisha@perceptprofile.com