Reliance ADAG's BigAdda to venture into e-commerce

Reliance ADA Group-promoted social networking and blogging site BigAdda is planning to close its social networking business. The website will now be repositioned as an e-commerce portal such as eBay.

In a communication to its subscribers, BigAdda said no user data would be available after July 15.

"We value our association with you. Please download all your personal collection of media files such as photos, videos and audio files from bigadda.com before July 15 as we are scaling down our social networking service.

"Data will be unavailable after the mentioned date."

The BigAdda site includes features like photos, videos, blogs, addas (groups) and cl-assified (powered by Quikr). BigAdda has 5.5 million users and celebrity blogs.

The celebrity blogs will, however, remain intact, said a senior ADAG official.

"This is a conscious decision to transform bigadda.com to an e-commerce business.

"With this transition, we will cover the third growth driver as well.

"The total e-commerce market in India is estimated to be Rs 3,000-3,500 crore (Rs 30-35 billion), while online is growing at a 50 per cent compounded annual growth rate," said Rohit Sharma, CEO, Reliance Entertainment (Digital Business).

In October 2010, the company had started focussing on e-commerce business on its homepage with 'Deals of the Day' with a few electronic goods on discount.

Shortly, they launched Bigadda Shop, which offered mobile phones, cameras, gaming, jewellery, mp3

players, computer accessories and movies.

In June, Bigadda crossed the Rs 2 crore (Rs 20 million) gross worth transactions and set up aggressive plans for next few months.

According to industry insiders, the company had posted a loss of Rs 40 crore (Rs 400 million) from this venture.

"When Reliance Entertainment launched this business in 2007, social media networks were the next big thing in the digital space. However, local social media networks showed no potential due to the dominance of Facebook and other global players," added Sharma.

It was expected to cross the 10 million user mark by 2010.

Several homegrown social networking sites like Minglebox.com, Fropper.com, Bharatstudent.com and IndyaRocks.com have failed to create a buzz and have repositioned themselves differently.

For instance, Minglebox.com, which started out as a social networking site, has now found a niche in the education space as a platform for career advice and tracking examinations.

"Facebook has grown too fast. The future lies in context-based networking. It seems to be a wise choice to move to e-commerce, which is the flavour of the season with Flipkart raising $20 million from investors," said Chris George, founder and CEO, EBS Worldwide.