eBay plans $21m investment in India over next two years

eBay, among the established global auction sites, is mulling over an investment of around $21 million in its Indian operations over the next two years.

eBay had acquired Indian auction site Baazee.com during last year and is planning to expand its activities. The management of ebay is also looking at how best to utilise the Indian technology talent pool in terms of increasing its outsourcing to India.

Said Avnish Bajaj, country manager, eBay India and also co-found of Baazee.com: "There is a possibility that eBay might look at investing around $21 million over the next two years in Indian operations. This is the same amount which we had raised from venture capitalists when we started out and during the course of operations before getting acquired by eBay."

He added that currently eBay outsources a part of its development to Cognizant and a part of customer support to IBM Daksh. "Dialogues are underway at the top management of eBay on how we can leverage the vast talent pool of India and we should be deciding on this within the next few quarters," Bajaj noted.

Commenting on expanding the footprint of eBay in India, he said that after the integration of eBay and bazee.com platforms, there has been a upsurge in Indians selling their goods to international buyers.

"There is a possibility that we might look at the services market through a separate portal, similar to the one eBay operates globally," Bajaj said.

Noting that eBay is increasingly tightening its framework to avoid misuse of portal by way of people selling illegal goods, he said that "we are constantly evaluting parameters through which posting of such goods is avoided. However, some people do get across bypassing the technology barriers. In such cases, as soon as we find such goods, we make sure we remove them from our site within 48 hours."