电商新战场 逐鹿竞天竺（下）

来源：微信公众号 东北偏北

外文翻译《The great race》下篇

The great race

电商新战场 逐鹿竞天竺

If a consumer does buy a product, the next task is deliveringit. Delivery itself is nothing new. Indians have long been able to have adelivery boy from the localkirana—the cornershops that dominate Indianretail—bring them a stick of butter. But being able to deliver on a largerscale is a challenge. The country’s mail service, IndiaPost, is ill-equipped to wait while a shopper tries on akurtaandponders returning it. So newcomers are building networks. But India’s traffic is hellish and its addresses vague.

当客户在网上拍下商品后，电商就该负责配送了。物流本身早已不是什么稀奇事。早先印度街头大名鼎鼎的连锁便利店就专门雇佣快递员街头巷尾给顾客运送黄油。但要将物流产业壮大完善却是巨大的挑战。印度传统的邮递服务，例如印度邮政，效率非常低，很多时候不得不等着客户试穿衣物并犹豫要不要退货。于是新的物流公司们试图建立并强化货运网络，但难度在于印度的交通状况过于糟糕，地址街道的编制也模糊混乱。

A startup named Delhivery has hired more than 15,000 staff, fromdevelopers to executives poached from Facebook and posh consultancies. Itsheadquarters in Gurgaon are so packed that engineers spill onto an outdoorporch, tapping their keyboards furiously. Delhivery, which works with a numberof e-commerce firms, is using machine learning to subdivide India’s postcodes,the better to map idiosyncratic descriptions. “We’ll know the house with theyellow door next to the temple,” says Sandeep Barasia, the managing director.The company moves goods to 700 or so small distribution centres overnight toavoid congested main roads during business hours. Thousands of delivery boysthen dash to and from the distribution centres throughout the day, bearing morethan 20 kilos on their bikes.

新成立的德里速递雇佣了超过15000名员工，包括研发人员、从facebook挖角的行政人员和高级顾问。德里速递位于首都机场的总部一派繁忙，包裹多到溢出了门廊，工作人员们疯狂的敲击着键盘。作为多家电商平台的合作伙伴，德里速递用机器规划区分印度地区不同的邮编。“这样我们就知道如何描述寺庙边上的黄色门的那间屋子了。”管理经理珊迪普巴拉西亚如是说。公司每天要在夜里将货物分散到大概700个运送集散地，避开白天的早晚高峰防止道路堵塞。第二天成千上万的快递员们赶到集散点，装满超过二十公斤的的背包又匆匆离去。

E-commerce companies are devising their own solutions, too. Someinvestments, such as warehouses, are straightforward. Others are less so.Flipkart last year began using Mumbai’s famousnetwork ofdabbawallas, or lunch-delivery men, to drop off packages whenthey picked up customers’lunch tins.Amazon has a pilot programme that lets customers order groceries online andhave them delivered from the nearestkirana.

电商平台们也有着自己的妙招，为完善物流或明或暗进行了多项投资。去年Flipkart开始使用孟买著名的dabbawallas送餐员网络，在他们挨家收回客户的食品罐头时顺便派送包裹。亚马逊也收购了印度连锁商店kirana，开展了一个试点计划，客户在网上订购的副食品将由最近的kirana分店进行派送。

Together, e-commerce firms say, these experiments could create anew truly national marketplace. Neelkanth Mishra of Credit Suisse, a bank,points out that road construction, electrification and mobile phones have stokedbig increases in rural wages, and thus demand for goods (see chart 2). Flipkartsays that about half its sales come from outside India’s bigcities. Snapdeal claims more than 60%. It recently launched sevenregional-language versions of its website.

电商平台们一致认为这些实验性的工作将在印度打开一片新局面。瑞士信贷集团的尼尔坎斯米什拉指出，道路建设、电气化和移动电话使得城区员工收入有了大幅上涨，因此货物的需求也水涨船高（详见前页表2）。Flipkart声称网站超过一半的销售额来自印度以外的他国大城市。Snapdeal的海外销售量则更是高达60%，因此最近它为官网设置了7种浏览语言。

As they build out their markets the firms trumpet theirassistance to small businesses. “Some of the big sellers on Amazon only had ashop in a corner of Bangalore; they were happy selling to five kilometresaround each shop,”declares Amazon’s Mr Agarwal.“Now they are shipping orders toKashmir and eastern India.” Amazon is helping more than 6,000 Indian businessesexport, as well. Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl isequally expansive: “Our ambition is to be a great social, economic andgeographic equaliser for the small businesses of India as they scale up.”

在扩张了市场的同时，各大电商平台强调了在支持中小企业发展方面也是功不可没。“许多在亚马逊上混得风生水起的大卖家们以前仅仅是在班加罗尔某个街角开了一家再小不过的商铺，在入网前他们能把商品卖到五公里以外就已经高兴得不得了了。”亚马逊的阿加瓦尔先生说，“而现在订单慧聪喀什米尔和东印度源源不断地向他们飞去。”亚马逊还为超过六千家印度出口商提供了不少帮助。Snapdeal的库纳尔巴尔也同样信心满满：“我们的野望在于成为印度中小企业壮大过程中不可或缺的社交、经济、地域等各方面的平衡器。”

请输入标题

All these bold plans are clouded by two obstinate facts. First,spending on discounts, marketing campaigns and new hires means none of thecompanies has yet made money. Visit any firm’s lobby andyou will meet herds of job applicants. Delivery boys like Anil are in hotdemand—a top performer in his branch, he earns about 14,000 rupees ($200) eachmonth.

然而，两大不争的事实为电商们的宏图大计蒙上了阴沉的云翳。第一，由于低廉的折扣、激烈的营销战以及大量雇佣员工，去年一年下来电商们几乎没赚到什么钱。随便哪个电商公司的大厅都被蜂拥而至的应聘者们挤的水泄不通。像艾尼尔这样的快递员行情十分紧俏——最好的快递员每月大概能挣到14000卢比（合200美元）。

Amazon is, predictably, outspending its competitors. Last yearits sales were two-thirds the size of its losses. Mr Agarwal is not bothered bya lack of profit. “The priority is growth,” he explains. Ankit Nagori, Flipkart’s chief business officer, says that the most important metricsfor his company are not margins but the number of new customers, how often theyshop, how much they buy and the speed of delivery. “If you solve for these fourthings,” he contends, “then the top line and bottom line will fall in place.”

根据粗略的预估，亚马逊的花销大概比其他竞争者们更多。去年亚马逊的销售额仅占到支出的三分之二。不过阿加瓦尔先生对此并不忧心，他解释道：“让企业充分成长才是最重要的。”Flipkart的首席商务官安吉特纳格里也表示，对于公司来说最重要的指标并不是收益，而是客户的数量、购买频率、单次交易量以及货运速度。“如果一家公司做好了以上四点，那公司的发展就不会被所谓的上限下限框死了。”

The second problem is regulatory. Forbidding foreign-backedfirms from owning inventory has costs. Companies have limited control over thequality of products on their sites, points out Morgan Stanley’s Parag Gupta, and they can do little to streamline the country’s fragmented supply chain. Flipkart has become a tangle ofinterlinked entities, including a holding company in Singapore, in an attemptto obey India’s rules while maximising profis.

之前提到的第二个事实，就是监管问题。要禁止外资公司持有库存，成本着实不低。摩根斯坦利的帕拉格加普塔指出，电商平台难以控制网站页面上所有商品的质量，也没法将印度支离分断的供应链完整串联起来。Flipkart为了实现利益最大化存在一些并不合规的举动，在公司内部，许多相互关联的整体互相纠结，管理不清。

India’s government maynonetheless come under protectionist pressure. Traditional retailers allegethat the online marketplaces flout rules against foreign direct investment.Facebook’s recently scuttled plan to offerIndians free internet services, including its own, sparked a furore over therisks of “digital colonialism”.

印度政府也可能要承受来自贸易保护者们的压力。传统的线下零售商们宣称网上商城违背了有关反外来直接投资的相关规定。另外，印度政府最近喊停了Facebook在印度全部的免费网络平台服务，引发了一场关于“数字殖民”风险论的狂潮。

Offline retailers are watching all this intently.Kiranasare relatively protected, thanks to meagre tax bills and limited carrying costs(they store little). Big shops and malls are another story (see chart 3). “Whatis remarkable for me is that in a very short time, e-commerce has become halfof what the organised market is,” says Abheek Singhi of the Boston ConsultingGroup. “Two years down the line, three years down the line, the e-commerce marketcould be larger.”

线下传统零售商们紧张地围观着电商的一切进程。Kirana连锁商店由于征税单很少，在库成本也不高（库存较少），相对受到的波及较小。但对于大型商店和商场来说，现实可就残酷得多了。“在我看来这么短的时间内，电商市场已经迅速崛起，几乎成长到有组织市场的一半，实在是成就非凡，”来自波士顿咨询的阿博希克辛海说，“按这个势头发展下去，两三年后电商市场将会又是一番新天地。”

Big foreign retailers—such as Ikea, a Swedish furniture company,which after years of kerfuffle may finally be opening an Indian store—cannotsell directly online. Matters are simpler for Indian retailers, but theircourse remains cloudy. Reliance Industries, a conglomerate with over 1m squaremetres of shop floor, is planning its own e-commerce venture. Future Group,which pioneered hypermarkets in the country, is outfitting small shop-ownersand entrepreneurs with digital catalogues so that consumers can order FutureGroup products in places where there will never be a store. However the firmhas scaled back some of its more ambitious plans for e-commerce. “The moresales you do, the more money you lose,” muses Kishore Biyani, Future Group’s founder. “You need to have continuous funding and someone toback you.”

海外大型零售商在印度是无法直接在网上销售的。例如瑞典家居商——宜家，尽管在摸索碰壁后好不容易能再印度开第一家分店，也仍然无法逃避这个问题。对于印度本土的零售商来说入网会简单许多，但它们的发展也并不明朗。信实工业，一家有着100万平米车间的公司，正在筹划入网进行电商创业。而印度大卖场行业的先锋企业——未来集团，也联合了一些小店店主和数字行业的企业家，希望让顾客在没有店铺的地方也能随时订购到未来集团的商品。然而未来集团同时也缩减了公司其他一些宏大的电商发展机会。“卖得越多，亏得越多。”集团老板基什尔比亚尼打趣说，“你得有源源不断的资金和固定的土豪金主啊。”

For the time being, the big companies in the sector are havingthose needs met. “You have at least three, potentially four large players withdeep enough pockets,” says Mr Singhi. “It’s going toplay out at a very high cost.” Companies like Alibaba and Amazon see that costas worth paying in part because, just as they applied what they learned inChina to India, so they will use their Indian experience in the next marketsthey move into. Alibaba, not content to back Paytm and Snapdeal, is alsocourting Indian businesses directly. In December it said it would help Indianfirms with financing and logistics so they might use Alibaba’s platforms to export to China and beyond. Eventually, Mr Malikes to say, any consumer should be able to buy from any seller, anywhere inthe world. The more of those purchases go through one of his firms, the better.

不过暂时来说，这些大公司还是能够继续自己的网商之路的。“好歹你得有三四个财力雄厚的大投资人给你撑着腰，口袋不深可玩不起，”辛海先生说，“局大了成本自然高。”不过，阿里巴巴和亚马逊这样的大电商认为这些花销并不会打水漂，既然他们能把在中国市场获得的经验运用到印度，也就说明将来印度的经验也同样能够帮他们开辟下一片天。阿里巴巴不仅投资了Paytm和Snapdeal，还直接杀进了印度本土的业务——去年十二月阿里承诺将为印度公司提供财务和物流方面的支持，通过阿里的平台实现印度与中国地进出口互通。马云认为买卖崇尚自由，贸易不该有疆域壁垒。通过他旗下公司完成的交易当然是越多越好。

And everywhere these giants go, home-grown entrepreneurs will behoping that their local acumen will give them an edge and looking for overseasinvestors to back them. Many of them will fail: India does not yet offer anexample of how to make a profit, and it may be a long time before it does. Butas long as some of these efforts survive, they will serve to speed progress,and innovation, in developing markets. As Amazon’s MrAgarwal says, “If millions of small, medium enterprises out there,manufacturers and retailers, can...sell their product anywhere in theworld—that’s transformational.”

电商巨头们开疆辟土，所及之处的当地企业家们都巴望着自己的对于本土市场的敏锐度能使他们占尽先机，并期望获得海外投资进一步发展。但许多企业家们将遭遇失败——在印度市场上还没有，也可能很久都不会有完胜的先例。然而只要有一点星火得以幸存，就会燎动电商发展的进程、推动创新来照亮整个市场。亚马逊的阿加瓦尔先生说：“如果世界上有数以百万计的中小型公司，那生产商和零售商就可以把他们的产品销售到地球任一角落——这就是变革所在。”