India is a massive E-Commerce marketplace now with every age group comfortably transacting online – more often preferring shopping online instead of visiting offline stores for a bigger gamut of choices and offers. The West shops online 10X more than India, but then India has the world’s 2nd largest number of smartphones and growing!
E-Commerce industry is growing at an astounding rate in India and is expected to account for 1.61% of the global GDP by 2018. The Asia-Pacific region is currently the largest E-Commerce market in the world, surpassing Europe. While China continues to lead the race, the Indian E-Commerce Industry isn’t far behind. According to a report by Forrester, India is set to become the fastest growing market in the Asia-Pacific region with an expected growth rate of over 57% between 2012-2016.
However following are the trends in Indian E commerce market-:
1. Men in India shop 3X more than women!
Surprised? While women continue to dominate the in-store markets, men with disposable incomes have taken it upon themselves to play the larger role in online shopping.
- Cash-On-Delivery (COD) remains the most preferred online payment method.
We Indians love the Cash-On-Delivery option; it gives us more control over online transactions since we don’t have to pay until the product is at our doorstep. COD option during checkout has also been proven to boost impulse purchases. - 60% of online purchases happen during business hours. (9AM – 5PM)
This proven trend is a myth-buster, that shows how integral a part online shopping has become in our day-to-day lives. Marketers can use this fact to schedule their promotions across advertising channels accordingly.
Apart than these current trends, a section in our report is devoted to Insights on the best practices to use these trends, with expert tips. For instance, now that we know of Indian men shopping more frequently than their fairer counterparts, retailers are recommended to tailor two different messaging strategies for the two separate genders. Our research shows Click Through Rates (CTR) are higher for men when Ads have darker backgrounds with price-oriented messaging, among other amazingly relevant insights on our report. Marketers can readily use these suggestions to develop a deeper understanding of the industry and promote their businesses better.
But Indian E commerce industry also suffers from following challenges and Problems-:
- High Logistic costs.
- High overheads.
- Focus on DISCOUNTS only.
- FMCG is at bottom.
- E commerce growth is fashion/Mobile category drive,
- There is no innovation.
- Teams lack FMCG experience.
- Continuous losses leading to Slow down/ scrapping/closure-Recent Snapdeal Fiasco is the best example.
However in this E commerce revolution we see a lot of E grocers mushrooming. They can be also called as regional e commerce players for e..g All supermarket.com in Mumbai, Ninza cart in Bangalore, Grocery bazaar in Noida etc.
In fact we foresee at least 2 % of India,s 10 Million retailers converting into E grocers in next 10 years. This is going to be next DISRUPTION in coming years.