Marketplace model fades as start-ups eye profits

Pure play aggregators are now looking at hybrid models to plug gaps in supply and bolster margins

Snapdeal, India’s first true e-commerce marketplace, is struggling for its survival. The pure aggregator model, which it pioneered and was once heralded as the cure to India’s disorganised business landscape, has finally begun showing its limitations.

Apart from investors losing confidence and some bad business decisions, one can argue that Snapdeal’s failure to create brands of its own led to rivals Flipkart and Amazon leaving it in a trail of their dust — the consequence of all this being the sale of the company that was once valued at $6.5 billion at under a billion dollars.

As investors began pressing