“What’s your favorite website for buying gadgets in India?”

Unlike the US, there aren’t many online stores in India that sell electronic gadgets so when I asked this question on Facebook, there were quite a few interesting responses.

Sumant Srivathsan wrote:

20north.com has a significant markup on US prices, not to mention ridiculous S&H charges. eBay isn’t too bad, as long as you’re careful about researching the seller well. There’s virtually no e-commerce destination that can compete with Lamington Road/Palika Bazaar/Ritchie Street. The silent reality of shopping in India is that price sensitivity rules even at the top end of the price chain.

Pankaj Jain wrote:

Excluding eBay, I find it strange that Indian online stores are so highly priced compared to brick and mortar stores. I almost always buy gadgets online in the US for better prices and great service. The India online story baffles me because personally, I find most of the stores in Palika Bazaar, etc. to be filled with thieves looking to slit my throat and would much rather buy online but prices are too high. Amazon needs to dip it’s toes in Indian water to get the game going.

Praveen Deepak wrote:

I check out the prices on ebay.in and end up bargaining for a lesser price on SP Road, Bangalore. Works for me ! :D

People don’t mind buying gadgets from eBay as long as the seller has a good reputation but in general, gadget fans are really disappointed with the state of online shopping in India. You don’t get the latest gadgets, the prices are always on the higher side and the user experience on most of these online gadget stores is often pathetic.

As an experiment, I compared the price of an iPod Touch 32 GB across all the ‘known’ online gadget stores in India and the numbers were almost in line with what other people had written on Facebook. You expect stuff to be less expensive online because the overheads are less but it’s a completely different story here (see chart above).

Today, Google India introduced a new comparison shopping tool that, they say, will help you compare prices of products from different India stores on one page. I tried it to get an idea about the price of an iPod Touch in India and the results obviously don’t give the right picture because the tool relies on price information from gadget websites which are just too expensive.