Retail giant Walmart-owned leading e-tailer Flipkart on Wednesday unveiled a dedicated portal '2GUD' for refurbished goods, including mobile phones, laptops and tablets, a week after shutting its eBay India operations. "The independent platform '2GUD' aims to bring affordability, accessibility and availability to the refurbished market, while also addressing the problem of trust and convenience," the company said.
The platform offers refurbished mobile phones, tablets, laptops and other electronic accessories along with a 3-12 month warranty. "Through 2GUD, we aim to remove the trust deficit that exists in the refurbished goods market," the city-based company's Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy told reporters here. The platform has been launched on mobile browsers initially through the site 2gud.com, and it will soon be accessible through desktop browsers and a mobile application.
The company's executives, however, declined to give the investment being made in its new arm. "Every product that is sold on the platform goes through about 47 rounds of checks and is sold in five grades based on their physical condition -- 'Like New', 'Superb', 'Very Good', 'Good' and 'Okay'," the company's Vice President heading 2GUD operations Anil Goteti said.
The prices of products on the platform will vary based on their condition. With the refurbished goods market remaining "highly fragmented and unorganised", 2GUD will remove the buyer-seller interaction by performing the necessary quality checks itself, Goteti said. The platform also allows customers to return their products, he added.
The company estimates the refurbished goods market in India to be worth $20 billion in the coming five to six years. The launch of the independent platform for old goods, which was developed over the last 10 months, comes a week after Flipkart shut down the eBay India operations on August 14. Several of eBay India's staff are now working with Flipkart's new arm for refurbished goods, the company's executives said, though they declined to share the specifics.
The Bengaluru-based Flipkart in 2017 acquired eBay India's operations in a $1.4 billion fund-raising deal from several investors, including eBay, which invested $500 million and received $200 million worth stocks in Flipkart. With Walmart acquiring a majority stake (77 per cent) in Flipkart in a $16 billion (Rs 1,07,662 crore) deal in May this year, California-based eBay had announced that it would sell its stake in Flipkart back to the company for about $1.1 billion and relaunch its India business soon.
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