Sure. Flipkart and Snapdeal are not thinking (or have plans that they have declared publicly) of becoming Multi-Nationals to compete with the likes of Amazon an

Sure. Flipkart and Snapdeal are not thinking (or have plans that they have declared publicly) of becoming Multi-Nationals to compete with the likes of Amazon and Ebay. Compare that with Alibaba which already has a US arm. I can, as an Indian, browse Amazon US shops and order from them (I of course have to pay shipping + duty on top of the original order). This isn't possible with Flipkart/Snapdeal. Even their local shops have lesser inventory and lesser options in comparison to Amazon India. Since India is a growing economy (and soon to be a less-cash economy), we will very soon get accustomed to purchasing goods and services online (like we did with mobile adoption). Once we do, there is no stopping us from purchasing goods and services from countries outside India as well (which was until recently just next to impossible for the lay man). Unless Flipkart/Snapdeal can cater to that market as well it's losing a big chunk of it's customers. India is definitely poised to become a booming e-commerce market in the future but it has no where near peaked for these companies to be content with. The consumer market is still heavily dominated by the US and European countries. If they do not expand they are doomed. And this is not restricted to e-commerce players alone. I notice this even with payment gateways / payment processors. We have quite a lot of payment processors that have a strong local presence. Some are even as good as Stripe (see Razorpay) when it comes to API and ease of implementation. But then again, they have no ambitions to expand to other countries. So India essentially has no access to an International payment gateway (Paypal doesn't count as it's only used for remittances. There is no equivalent of Paypal IPN/Paypal Express Checkout/Paypal Marketplace). To disrupt these companies, all it takes is for Stripe to open shop in India. Nobody would then have any incentive to use these payment gateways and they'll start seeing their market share diminish.