To begin with..
It has really been an interesting and successful economic journey for the Indian Retail Industry from being titled as the “Fragile Five” (a term coined by Morgan Stanley) in 2013 to become one of the most favored investment destinations in 2017. The UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2017 stated India will be behind only the U.S. and China in terms of investment attractiveness over the next two years, making it among the top three most attractive investment destinations in the world.
E-retailing has taken the world of retail by storm and captivated the imagination of an entire generation of entrepreneurs, with e-commerce ventures of various business and commercial models. The essence of e-commerce is in its ability to surpass physical boundaries and reach customers to their doorstep which makes it way too different from the traditional brick-and-mortar stores.
The Relevance of Online Shopping in India
With 70-80% accessing the Internet through smartphones and over 580 million people using the same through another devices, the Indian e-retail industry is soaring higher than ever. The dissemination and easy availability of smartphones has made this an achievable target. E-tailing in India is predicted to experience a massive growth, with projections to jump from around 16 billion U.S. dollars in 2016 to just over 45 billion U.S. dollars in 2021with the increasing demand of the smartphones. In 2016, Online Shopping site in India: Shop Online for Mobiles, Books, Watches, Shoes and More was the leading online store in India with net e-commerce sales of 437.7 billion U.S. dollars, followed by local competitors Flipkart and Snapdeal.
It is predicted that 2018 will be another milestone year for the e-commerce industry. The current push of e-transactions & hyper local attention will give a fair chance to the Industry for a matured growth & widen the customer reach & a sustainable profit & revenue growth.
Rural E-commerce: A Promising Future
It is revealed that almost half of all Indian internet users will be from the rural areas in 2020. The adoption of e-commerce activities in rural India is still quite less at present. An estimate of 15% of connected users in rural India use internet either to research a product, purchase a product, or submit a product review online, according to the report.
Internet was limited to mostly the urban population in India earlier. However, the user base is now both expanding and diversifying as Internet is spreading its hands to the rural areas also.
The Digital India campaign initiated by the Prime Minister aims to connect the villages with broadband internet. It has become obvious that E-Commerce firms are striving to bank on India’s rural market in cooperation with the government’s Digital India initiative. Examples are cited by Flipkart, Snapdeal, Infibeam and Paytm by signing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government to reach rural areas and villages.
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