The experience of 99labels, a fashion e-retailing site controlled by InfoEdge – the same company that owns India’s largest job search site, Naukri.com – is key to understanding big changes sweeping the e-commerce sector. According to 99labels founder and CEO, Ishita Swarup, marketing budgets at the company have been cut to one-fourth of what they used to be around December 2011. "We have gone completely off mass media for marketing and focused only on social media, primarily Facebook," said Swarup. Till December, 99labels was marketing heavily on radio as well.
Last year, a multitude of e-commerce companies were burning money, advertising heavily and throwing cash at anything that could help them scale faster. Then, the slowdown caught up with them and the fountain of investments slowed down to a trickle, leaving them gasping for survival.
(Source: Business Standard)