Several Indian e-commerce start-ups, including Zomato, BookMyShow, and BigBasket, are reportedly in investment talks with China's largest search engine company.
A spokesperson from China's Baidu.com said in an email circulated around Chinese media that the Indian market has huge business opportunities. Baidu plans to invest more resources in this marketplace to provide their services to more consumers.
However, the Chinese search engine giant did not reveal its detailed investment schedule or amount it plans to spend.
Zomato is a leading food search website in India; BookMyShow is one of the largest online ticket providers in the country; and BigBasket is a leading grocery e-commerce company.
India has a population of 1.3 billion and about 20% of them use the Internet. Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicted that by 2025, the total trading value of Indian e-commerce providers will reach USD220 billion; while the number was USD11 billion in 2015.
The huge potential of this marketplace recently attracted many international investors, including Alibaba and Softbank. In August 2015, India's large e-commerce company Snapdeal.com gained USD500 million investments from Alibaba, Foxconn, and Softbank. In February 2015, Alibaba's Ant Financial acquired about a 25% stake in One97 Communication, an Internet payment service provider in India.
