kanpur this diwali online shopping portals are on top of the market with their big offers and attractive schemes making it difficult for retailers to compete with them having a very little margin on their side a big boom in telecommunication sector and high usage of internet has already turned things on their side providing a favourable ground to these electronic business portals online shopping was invented by an english entrepreneur michael aldrich in 1980s connecting a tv set to real time transaction processing computer via a domestic telephone line but it gained momentum when internet came into play same is the case with indian market flipkart snapdeal inmobi quikr amazon india and paytm to name to a few are top online portals available in india for online shopping lovers prabhat singh a retailer of mobile phones while talking to toi said there is a downfall in the citys retail market because of online shopping websites now only those customers come to us who dont trust online portals anand singh manager at a franchise outlet of samsung said the requirement of mobile phones has gone so high that samsung was left with no other option than to tie up with some online shopping portal to meet the growing demand at the same time it has adversely affected retailers especially the small outlet owners comparing last year sales from retail outlets to this years sales till date it has definitely decreased with just one week left for the festival outlets which used to be overcrowded are empty nowadays he added the owner of an old and big grocery shop located in the heart of the city talked about different issues responsible for the downfall of retail business he said previously when big malls entered the market they took away a large number of customers by giving various offers which was not possible for us to give with such a little margin of 810 now after introduction of online shopping portals the retailers feel devastated despite these challenges different associations working for benefit of the retailers are tightening their shoes to overcome these problems but challenges are still coming their way sahil tuli owner of a leading mobile store of the city said the counter sale has got affected and consumers get confused whether to buy from online shopping portals or from mobile stores this confusion has affected the business dharmendra gupta president of kanpur mobiles dealers association said that few initiatives had been taken like twohour delivery at the door step live demonstration and some gifts offers especially in diwali festival we are also trying to match the abnormal rates of online mobile phones so that our customers do not switch to online shopping and for this we are constantly updating ourselves and purchasing accordingly for the shops one special thing which is attracting our customers is that we are providing data transfer facility to those customers who do not have this transfer device facility he added tnn published on