Weekly News Wrap: Alibaba’s e-commerce domination under threat; Ikea to invest $1.19b in two New Delhi malls
And traditional crafts retailer FabIndia mulls a $500m IPO.
From Reuters:
For more than a decade, Alibaba Group has been China's undisputed e-commerce king but of late its crown has shown signs of slipping, unsettled by an influx of aggressive competitors into the sector.
In China, its two main marketplaces—Tmall for established brands and Taobao which welcomes all kinds of merchants—process over $1t in orders annually.
But Alibaba is seeing sharply slower growth in customer management revenue, the money derived from charging merchants for services which usually accounts for one-third to one-half of its overall revenue. Alibaba last month also cut its annual revenue forecast whilst sales for Singles Day this year climbed only 8.5%, the slowest to date.
Those disappointing numbers are due in part to regulatory changes and pandemic-induced slower economic growth that has made shoppers reluctant to splurge.
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From Reuters:
The malls division of Swedish furniture giant IKEA will invest around $1.19b (INR90b) in two centres it plans to build on the outskirts of New Delhi, a top executive said.
IKEA's malls business, one of the world's biggest, said it was building two centres - malls that are anchored by its stores - in Gurugram and Noida, two large cities on the periphery of the Indian capital.
"Beyond the investments that are happening in retail, there are two centres that we are planning and they are around INR9,000 crores ($1.19b)," Peter Betzel, CEO of IKEA's India business said in an interview.
The mall in Gurugram, which will house office space beside an IKEA store is expected to be operational in 2025, Managing Director of Ingka Centers, Cindy Andersen told Reuters last month. Ingka Centres is owned by Ingka Group which also owns most IKEA stores worldwide.
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From Bloomberg:
FabIndia, a retailer of clothing and furniture inspired by traditional Indian crafts, plans to file preliminary documents for an initial public offering (IPO) of as much as $500m, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Delhi-based company, whose backers include PremjiInvest, the family office of Wipro Ltd. founder Azim Premji, aims to submit its so-called draft red herring prospectus as soon as early next year, the people said. Its IPO will largely consist of investors selling existing shares, they said, asking not to be identified as the information is private.
FabIndia is considering seeking a valuation of about $2b, one of the people said. Deliberations are ongoing and details of the listing such as size and timing could change, the people said.
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