Tata Cliq pushes to become one of India’s largest e-commerce sites

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Mar 28, 2018

The Tata Group’s e-commerce arm, Tata Cliq, is rolling out huge discounting initiatives with the aim of reaching the same level as India’s largest e-commerce platforms, Amazon and Flipkart.

Tata Cliq is working to ameliorate its online presence with spending on digital marketing and heavily discounting products. As Amazon and Flipkart continue to grow, and with Reliance Retail planning to enter the market later this year, the pressure is on the medium to large sized e-commerce firms such as Tata Cliq to stand out.

Tata Cliq sells a variety of product categories and brands and has a large emphasis on fashion. However, it is the electronics, home appliances, and smartphone sections that the business is most heavily discounting at present with prices lower than rivals Amazon and Flipkart in many cases. However, some worry that discounting items too heavily in the hope of drawing customers could cause an unsustainable price war, as has happened before.

The CEO of Tata UniStore, Ashutosh Pandey, told the Economic Times last year that, “While there will be discounts since we have to compete, we are not going to burn our pockets. We will not be the cheapest place to shop but the most authentic place.” This suggests that such heavy discounting will not become the main strategy of the brand but more of a short term one.

Tata Cliq is operated by Tata UniStore and began operations in 2016 and reported sales of 12 crore rupees (approximately 1.8 million US dollars) for the 2016/2017 financial year, with a loss of 162 crore rupees (approximately 24.4 million dollars).