The recommerce market: Your, road to an affordable Apple iPhone cheap

The price advantage is not always this huge, but you will get some good deals with the right research. And the offers are not limited to smartphones, as most of these sites deal in everything from laptops to televisions. According to a recent report by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, the recycled products market in India is expected to cross Rs 1,15,000 crore ($18.4 B) by the end of this year.

Hitendra Chaturvedi, Founder and CEO of Greendust, says they source products directly from the company or distributors of the company in India and are refurbished in-house. He says only genuine spare parts are used to refurbish and all devices come with after sales service, warranty and extended warranty.

Rahul Chowdhury, CEO and Co-Founder of Reboot Systems India Pvt. Ltd, says they have focused primarily on the B2B space for procurement of disposable e-goods apart from the dealer network cultivated in the 10 largest cities. At the moment, only about 10 per cent of the procurement from the company come from end consumers.

ReGlobe, meanwhile, works with professional buyers of second hand devices across the country who pay it a commission for every transaction that happens through the platform. Nakul Kumar, Co-Founder & COO, says they work with localised professional buyers of second hand devices who do the pickup from customer’s homes and pay cash. Here the refurbishment is done by the buyers and hence reglobe does not sell any products online.  They however drive the Exchange/Buy-back programs of e-commerce sites like Snapdeal.com, Amazon.in, ebay.in and Infibeam.com as well as manufacturers like Apple India.

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While Indians do not have an issue picking up an old device from a local shop, they will think twice before doing the same from an online seller. This is why Chaturvedi says the biggest challenge in the sector is trust. So GreenDust certified refurbished products come with a 1-year warranty that can be extended by opting for a GreenDust Protection Plan. The company claims it has over 600 service centers across India and after sales services provided by certified technicians and 90 mobile service vans through the week.

Data with the sites suggest Apple and Samsung still command the aspirational market that drives their sales. Also, Bangalore seems to be way ahead of other Indian cities when it comes to selling and buying old devices.

“The response has been phenomenal. We currently refurbish about 6,600 products per month and all of them get sold as soon as they are available. That’s why we are increasing our capacity to about 10,000 products a month by December this year and take it up to 20,000 by March of 2016 — basically, tripling capacity in the next six months,” says Chowdhury of Reboot. He says among PCs Dell, HP and Lenovo are equally popular and says people opt for refurbished PCs because they don’t want to buy assembled ones. In the mobility category, they only sell Apple products as “people love to own an Apple product”.

But it is wrong to assume the sales of refurbished products limited to expensive brands. Greendust’s Chaturvedi says customer look for value and that is why the Xiaomi Redmi 1S was a super hit at Rs 4999 on his site. Chowdhury says a refurbished iPhone 5S for Rs 24,600 will be cosmetically and functionally as good as a new iPhone and will come in a brand new box with a replaceable warranty. And this is why he is struggling to source more Apple products to keep up with the demand.

With the growing popularity among end consumers and the possibilities thrown up by e-commerce, companies like ReGlobe are thinking big and want to cover more of the country. For those of these companies that can get the trust of the Indian market, there seems to be some good times ahead.