DEFINING THE RELEVANT MARKET IN AN ONLINE-OFFLINE PLATFORM

Abstract

The advent of internet in India was in the year 1995 when it was formally launched by the Vidhesh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) for the Indian people. And since then, internet is ruling all of our lives by taking care of each and every requirement be it shopping, social media, banking, education, grocery etc. and we undisputedly have become the slaves of this modern technology. With the increase in technology and the usage of internet as a mandate for public work like Aadhar registration, the number of users will be likely to increase. Today, from searching for a city in US to a small search like the nearest shop for medicines we all use google, from using social media to connect with the thousands of people to studying online we all are dependent on it. Google has become the remedy to all our problems. Penetration of Internet in India grew from just 4 per cent in 2007 to 35.03 per cent in 2017.Moreover, in India Google has approximately 97% of market share in search engines like Bing and Yahoo between September 2017 – September 2018.The people of different age-group they are also using this intelligent tool for their needs. Now, the aged ones prefer ordering fruits and vegetables from Big Basket rather than going to the local vendor, as it is available all at a single click, which earlier was not the case. People back some 10-15 years ago were more outside this virtual world, they used to go to the shops for shopping, used to negotiate with the drivers for the fares and destination which has been gradually shifted to the online applications like uber for travelling, amazon for shopping and so on. The reason of this ease is the increase in the usage of smart phones which caters to all such facilities. According to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), India’s private telecom service providers for 2017 had a total of 981.65 million subscribers base. Now from social media, to booking of cabs, to playing games, watching movies, shopping everything can be done through such a handy device, providing the growing prospects for the online markets. This paper is basically about the different challenges associated with the online market with respect to defining the relevant market where it operates. Also, the paper would delve into defining what relevant markets would be in online market in terms of both relevant product market and relevant geographic market, along with defining the relevant market in the merger between an online and offline platform.