The growth of numerous Internet based shopping portals like Flipkart, Infibeam, Jabong, Myntra etc, made me wonder if was also possible to buy electronics components online in India. The reason to go online is due to the fact that the main electronics market is very far from the place I live and components or parts as per my requirement may not be available locally.
There are some global shopping portals already available, like Digikey, Mouser, RS Components, Element 14, but ordering from them would be an expensive affair due to high shipping cost to India. This made me start with a Google search of online electronics components sellers. The first page itself bought some useful information, however, there were 2 blog posts which I found informative - Manish Chiniwalar and Achu's TechBlog - both contain almost the same information. In the past couple of months I used a few of these portals to buy components and boards for my requirements.
One of the things that I learnt while browsing these lists and using these online shops was that there was no review of these portals available. For a new person who had no experience other than buying books, clothes, kid's shoes or mobiles online, the experience can be very different. So I thought to put together my experience of these portals.
Another website with a good inventory seems to be Hobby2Go, however the prices are on the higher side and I have had no experience of dealing with them yet. Ebay.in is another source from where you can find some deals at times (notice the 16x2 char LCD I bought from ebay).There are some global shopping portals already available, like Digikey, Mouser, RS Components, Element 14, but ordering from them would be an expensive affair due to high shipping cost to India. This made me start with a Google search of online electronics components sellers. The first page itself bought some useful information, however, there were 2 blog posts which I found informative - Manish Chiniwalar and Achu's TechBlog - both contain almost the same information. In the past couple of months I used a few of these portals to buy components and boards for my requirements.
URLs: 1. Nex-Robotics, 2. Probots, 3. OnlineTPS and 4. Sunrom
Hope this post would help you in shopping for components online and you can share your experience in the comments.
© Vivek Sinha, 2012
