Open House with Ambareesh Murty, Country Manager - eBay India, 8 Oct 4–5 PM

[sapana@ebay.com]

On Ambareesh's behalf:

Hi Everyone

This is Ambareesh Murty, Country Manager of eBay India and I’d like to invite you to an Open House discussion with me on Thursday, 8th Oct 2009 from 4-5 PM IST.

At the outset let me say a big thank you to our buyers and sellers for your enthusiasm and commitment towards making eBay a great place to buy and sell; it is through the efforts of our members like you that eBay India has consistently been chosen India’s most preferred online shopping destination.

You’d be happy to know that our motto of providing Lots of Safe, Easy, Deals has resulted in strong business growth, some of the key steps in 2009 towards improving our user experience and growing our community further have been:

1. The marketing team has been busy driving new buyers to eBay India through partnerships with exciting high profile celebrity events like auctions linked to ‘Tere Mere Beach Main’

2. The effective use of eBay India coupons has helped generate trial thus helping us convert many more of our visitors into buyers

3. High impact marketing promotions have helped us deliver great value to our buyers, thus ensuring that an ever increasing part of a buyers overall spending is now on eBay

4. The recent launch of Global Easy Buy has further helped us increase variety for our buyers; Global Easy Buy gives our buyers access to a large pool of international items delivered conveniently at their doorstep

5. We’ve always believed that the key to having happy buyers is having happy and successful sellers; this year we’ve invested in our sellers’ success by enhancing our Category Management activities; the Category Management team has successfully ensured that they reach out to more and more sellers to help build a great business on eBay

6. To broad base seller success we initiated pricing changes like the removal of max cap; this change helped us increase visibility for the more sellable items. Further, to improve the return on investment for our shop sellers, we’ve made product changes to ensure that their shop listings get greater visibility in core search results.

7. Feedback disputes were a concern area for most of our members; to provide a fair dispute resolution process, we launched Community Court last year and as many of you might have already experienced, Community Court has successfully achieved its objective with more than 85% of cases getting resolved successfully

That said, we continue to seek areas of improvement so as to provide and deliver to a seamless marketplace experience for our buyers and sellers. I look forward to discussing your suggestions towards further improving our user experience and also answer your eBay related questions during the Open House discussion. You can post your questions in advance on this thread, or join me on 8th Oct at 4 PM for a live discussion.
See you on the 8th!

Regards
Ambareesh Murty
Country Manager – eBay India

[dukan2010]

I am leaving you with Top Ten List of Urgent Things To Do.
1.Modification/ Abolition of Section 9 of Ebay’s Terms of trade.
2.Further Introduction of PayPal
3.Strengthening Strict action on unpaid items Dispute
4.Launch an Educational Campaign For My loyal Sellers. Thereby educating them about the laws and custom duties
5.Abolish/ Amend Global Easy Buy Program where buyers can not leave a honest feedback(no option for negative feedback)
6. Start of Local Level Advertisement campaign of Hot selling items Rather then flaunting it on my HomePage.
7.Immidiate expansion of Core Banking Partners/ Payment Gateways
8.Payout of Sellers Money By RTGS/ IFS Code system
9. Roll out a mascot / celebrity / Buyers~Seller feedback for attracting new ebayers & brand promotions
10. Induce PSIES (Push SMS Information Extraction System )

[dukan2010]

The success of Ebay INDIA Module is sufficient for my fellow seller friends to know that there is no Bump in the success path of EBAY. This open house is for improvement in policies, new amendments, discovering new issues and finding there solutions. I have reviewed Ebay INDIA’s policies. If I had been in your shoes I would have induced many changes. But since its not me who Will be honored for all this (and would subsequently be paid 😄 ).

[dukan2010]

Murty Sir,
On Behalf on Ebay India's seller Community, I congratulate you and your team for Various achievements as briefed in Sapna's post on your Behalf. I am truly delighted to be here today among so many friends. I am thankful to you for providing a platform to new/old sellers to share there Grievances with You. I have been there in Person with You at Click IT conclave in FMS, New Delhi. I have Personally seen you speak and have complete idea of your zeal for success of Ebay INDIA.

[ajaykumar2021]

Dear Ambareesh,
I am new to ebay, and on going through various feedbacks of your buyers I was very disturbed to read that they were many complaints, which have not been resolved fully. You must ensure that your customers get not only safe,easy deals but also genuine deals with quality products. I am very apprehensive of buying anything from ebay, I don't want to be taken for a ride. Please ensure that your buyers get value.

[shivamemory]

Hello Mr. Ambreesh Murthy,

Its very nice to see you at community forums.
I also agree to the points mentioned by other sellers regarding payment methods, such as :


1. PaisaPay Fees should be reduced.

2. Payment Gateway: We need more payment methods to be provided. The Rececently added Debit cards / Visa Cards are not enough, should also provide EMI facility on Credit Cards such as Citi Bank, HDFC, SBI etc.

the one more thing i want to add that :

Till today , many people don't have the knowledge of ecommerce. they don't even know what the online shopping is. Can Ebay participate in INDIA INTERNATIONAL TRADE FARE, which is from 13th Nov to 27 Nov. Every Year in New Delhi. this way new buyers / seller be intoduced with ebay. Millions of people visit the IITF during this period. is This possible that EBAY participate in this Year's Trade Fair ?

With Regards,

Joginder k.

S.H.I.V.A.M.E.M.O.R.Y.

[sah.mohit]

I am posting a serious uyer concern here.

Most of the sellers here provide dealer warranty of one year on high price fitness/electronics/mobiles. However, in many cases service is required after say 7-8 months. Till that time, feedback has been left by buyer on initial impressions and file dispute period is over.

Most of the sellers refuse service, change mobile nos or ebay id. What should the buyer do in such case. You can escalate it to Ebay trust team but the period taken by them for suitable resolution is never ending.

Some kind of check has to be put by ebay for such cases and believe you me, they are large in number. Needless to say , such buyer wont return to ebay and this is the primary reason I am afraid to make purchases here for high priced goods.

[best_deals_of_this_world]

Hi All and Mr. Murty!
I am closing associated with eBay when this was called Bazzee. I have seen it changing so many policies for of course betterment of eBay no doubts about it. My interpretation of eBay is it’s a buyer centric system, we need to convince our buyer that its absolutely absolutely safe buying platform. Buyer is free enough to provide a feed back without thinking that he himself might get a -ve one, as per the new eBay feedback policy, and certainly many other things; like buyer has now control over seller payments. the whole idea is the generate buyers. Once we have buyers on this system the engines would start roaring. 3 Top things on my agenda to discuss would be
1> very very small paisa pay fee (may be like 0.5 % MAX)
Use paisa pay only to get buyer confidence, reduce fee as far as possible. Make it a model of high volume low margins. If we make low margins surely we will get high volumes. This will also cancel the tendency where seller mention in their listings "Pay me through bank transfer and get 4-5 % discount, which is absolutely unsafe. But can lure a buyer". See how successful mobile companies are making profit based on low tares high volume models.
Here at eBay ideas is to make profit as well as increase volume.
2>Like we are promoting global buy , do a complete package for Global Sell too , hire agencies , tie up with international courier companies to promote global Sell Model. This would sure help and encourage a seller to do international listings. Make small division/teams who would educate sellers to sell internationally and educate them about getting a IEC (Import Export Code)
3> EMI offer to be extended to every credit card not JUST ICICI. or As many as possible. This is something excellent opportunity for seller to utilize, believe me if this is extended to max credit cards, a seller can sell same product which a manufacturer is selling with slight margin and by providing EMI, but for the this should be enabled for maximum cards.

I can write many many more things, and suggestions for my favorite place, where I spent max of my free time.
Will surely see you in more open house in future
Regards.

[best_deals_of_this_world]

Hi All and Mr. Murty!
I am closely associated with eBay since when this was called Bazzee. I have seen it changing so many policies for of course betterment of eBay no doubts about it. My interpretation of eBay is it’s a buyer centric system, we need to convince our buyer that its absolutely absolutely safe buying platform. Buyer is free enough to provide a feed back without thinking that he himself might get a -ve one, as per the new eBay feedback policy, and certainly many other things; like buyer has now control over seller payments. the whole idea is the generate buyers. Once we have buyers on this system the engines would start roaring. 3 Top things on my agenda to discuss would be
1> very very small paisa pay fee (may be like 0.5 % MAX)
Use paisa pay only to get buyer confidence, reduce fee as far as possible. Make it a model of high volume low margins. If we make low margins surely we will get high volumes. This will also cancel the tendency where seller mention in their listings "Pay me through bank transfer and get 4-5 % discount, which is absolutely unsafe. But can lure a buyer". See how successful mobile companies are making profit based on low tares high volume models.
Here at eBay ideas is to make profit as well as increase volume.
2>Like we are promoting global buy , do a complete package for Global Sell too , hire agencies , tie up with international courier companies to promote global Sell Model. This would sure help and encourage a seller to do international listings. Make small division/teams who would educate sellers to sell internationally and educate them about getting a IEC (Import Export Code)
3> EMI offer to be extended to every credit card not JUST ICICI. or As many as possible. This is something excellent opportunity for seller to utilize, believe me if this is extended to max credit cards, a seller can sell same product which a manufacturer is selling with slight margin and by providing EMI, but for the this should be enabled for maximum cards.

I can write many many more things, and suggestions for my favorite place, where I spent max of my free time.
Will surely see you in more open house in future
Regards.

[anwarazad]

Hi Mr Murthy,

I am so excited to see you on the community forum, and am looking forward for the discussion today evening.

I am a fledgling on ebay, and am quite excited to be here. I believe ebay wish to be a platform where people can find deal like no where else and buy without a second thought about security or authenticity, and that is the kind of atmosphere I too, hope to bring to my future customer here on ebay. In order to facilitate that end, I have 2 requests:

1. I would love to know if Ebay India plans to do an awareness Campaign/Advertisement down south in kerala, where I currently reside (also happen to be my home territory).

2. I would also like to request for a tutorial on selling on Ebay by one of your Ebay staffs (preferable someone with good language skill). Its pretty difficult learning by (and at times, terrifying) going through the community post, as any search query would bring out an unsorted list of posts all the way from 2005 till date (most of which are no longer relevant).
The help section is of some help, though sometimes seem contradictory to the community board posts.

Eagerly waiting to join you this evening,

With Warm Regards
Anwar Azad

[sjewelsdk]

Hello Mr.Murthy,
Thanks for giving us an oppurtunity to speak with you.

Sir lately i have observed that we are not getting international buyers.

The reason being our category mapping is not at all good. ILF listings are not coming up in proper categories in other ebay sites. Merely putting them on international sites without proper mapping is useless.

Hence my suggestion to you that ebay india should concentrate/ invest in this area in consultation with top sellers. I mean the sellers should be invited and sit with category team to map with other ebay sites.

Last year ebay dot com totally changed their category structure and ebay dot in after repeated please adjusted with it after many months. same thing would be happening with other ebay sites.

it is very surprising that we are not getting any customers from european market and till last year there were so many.

i feel this area should be well looked after with a robust team in consultation with top sellers.

thanks for your time

regards
deepak