Hi, everyone, welcome to the A6NZ podcast. I'm Sonal. In today's episode, we're covering

e-commerce marketplace businesses, payments, the challenges of payments internationally,

the challenges of logistics, the tension between holding inventory or not, why that matters,

and more interestingly, how things are playing out internationally versus in the U.S.,

especially when it comes to things like fashion, curation, discovery, and more.

Joining us for that conversation, we have two special guests today, Canal Ball and Rohit Bunsal,

the co-founders of India's Snap Deal, which is one of the largest marketplace e-commerce businesses in India.

And we also have A6 and Z deal and investing team partner, Anya Hurri-Haron, who covers all things consumer from marketplaces to social for us.

Just to get people context, because I think in the U.S., most people are probably most used to Amazon,

what's the most popular product or category that's sold and transacted on Snap Deal?

I would say women's fashion.

That's very different from what Amazon was known for.

Well, yeah, because I don't like buying clothes on Amazon.

Yeah. So I think in Amazon in the early days, it was primarily books, and then they expanded it to other

electronics devices. Apparel in fashion and accessories is still a big category, but it was not the number one

launch pad for Amazon. So it's very interesting to see how, you know, being a marketplace in

India, fashion is quite popular. I think there's a structural reason for that. In India,

India's retail market is about $600 billion, going to a trillion dollars in the next three years.

You're talking dollars like in U.S. dollars. Overall market will be one trillion,

out of which only 7% is organized.

93% of India's retail is small businesses, many of whom don't have distribution.

Because they're just local players, basically. They're no large chains that they can sell their products through.

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