For many years now, the predominant model for e-commerce in India was “inventory-led”— customers order a product which ships instantly from warehouses run by online marketplaces like Flipkart or Amazon. In days gone by, the inventory belonged to Flipkart and Amazon, but later on, after pressure from India’s government, the inventory could belong to any of the third-party sellers that sell through these platforms.
But after three important deals in the last one year, we may perhaps be looking at a premature saturation of the inventory model.
