Amazon and Flipkart are sprawling marketplaces, each with hundreds of thousands of merchants selling nearly everything under the sun to millions of users. But while the large captive audience is a draw for most merchants, the sheer noise on these platforms is causing many brands to start looking for alternatives. Some of these businesses have coughed up the cash to set up e-commerce platforms of their own. Others, however, are flocking to smaller marketplaces that curate a niche segment - like health products or clean beauty products - offering an alternative that provides both an intimate, consumer-focused experience and variety akin to their larger counterparts. Some of them have over 5,000 brands listed on their platforms. With the likes of beauty-focused Nykaa and childcare-oriented FirstCry seeing success, more such marketplaces have popped up. Even companies that aren’t strictly e-commerce—like CRED—are clamoring to be a part of this space. There are so many of them that personal care brand MCaffeine and health product brand True Elements have a presence across more than 80 online marketplaces. No matter the number of marketplaces, though, at the end of the day, there are only so many shoppers to go around. All of these niche platforms are courting the same set of 150-200 million Indian shoppers that large marketplaces are burning enormous amounts of money to acquire. What happens when these niche marketplaces begin scaling, as all companies eventually do? We dive deeply, a reported newsletter on something interesting brewing in India’s e-commerce ecosystem
