eBay is an American multinational e-commerce company launched by Pierre Omidyar in September 1995. It is headquartered in San Jose, California, United States. eBay is a global online marketplace dealing in business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer sales for new, used and refurbished goods. Some of the main features of eBay include fixed-price listings, auctions, buy it now option, AI-driven search and recommendations, discounts manager and international shipping.
eBay is widely used by individuals, companies and governments to purchase and sell a wide range of legal products. It operates in over 190 countries and has around 134 million active users. The company reported a global revenue of $2.585 billion in the first quarter of 2025. eBay can be accessed through both its website and mobile application.
Operations in India
eBay is not banned in India. The local platform eBay India was shut down by Flipkart in August 2018. Flipkart had earlier acquired eBay’s India arm, eBay.in, but failed to sustain its operations. The platform eBay.in stopped taking orders from 14th August 2018. Issues with orders already placed with eBay.in were resolved by the company till 30th August 2018.
eBay had entered India by acquiring Baaze.com in the year 2005. It operated as an online domestic marketplace, eBay.in, in India for 12 years. In February 2017, eBay sold its India business to Flipkart. This was a part of a deal in which eBay also invested around $500 million in Flipkart and bought shares worth $220 million in the e-commerce company.
The agreement between Flipkart and eBay enabled cross-border trade. While eBay provided access to its global inventory to Indian users, Flipkart gave access to its Indian inventory to millions of global active users of eBay.
eBay terminated its agreement with Flipkart after 77% of stakes in the latter were bought by Walmart. eBay also terminated the licence it had granted to Flipkart to use eBay.in brand. Consequently, Flipkart shut down eBay.in platform in August 2018.
Current Status
Indian users can access both eBay.com and eBay.in since both the platforms are active in India. The global platform, eBay.com, enables cross-border trade for Indian buyers and sellers, which means Indian buyers can purchase products from international sellers and Indian sellers can export their goods to over 190 international markets. eBay.in, on the other hand, doesn’t have domestic listings but features seller tools for global exporting.
In March 2024, Cellular Association of India accused eBay and some other platforms of facilitating telecom equipment theft and requested the Government of India to ban these sites. However, the government is yet to take any action in this matter.
