Dec 4, 2006

India Set for Huge E-Commerce Growth

With 38–40 million Internet users in India today, which is expected to grow at a very fast pace to 100 million by 2007-08, e-commerce in India is expected to grow exponentially.


E-commerce in India has almost touched the Rs 5,000 crore mark and is expected to garner around Rs 9,500 crore by 2007.


This is despite the infrastructure constraints the country’s online community faces and the recent figures put out by the Internet and Mobile Association of India that estimate the Indian e-commerce market to touch Rs 2,300 crore (around 10 per cent of the organised Indian retail market) by 2006-2007, which itself is a 95 per cent rise over last year’s figure of Rs 1,180 crore and an over-300 per cent rise over the figure for 2004-05.


The discrepancy in figures arises from the fact that online travel alone, which accounted for $800 million (a little over Rs 3,600 crore) in 2006, has not been accounted for, says Deep Kalra, founder and CEO, MakeMyTrip.com.


This figure itself is poised to double next year. Do the maths for “all services that are being bought online” and you get a figure of around Rs 9,500 crore.


Further, the figures are credible if you consider the following facts: An estimated Rs 30 crore of air and rail tickets are sold online in India every day; a jewellery piece sells every 5 minutes, a mobile handset every 8 minutes and a car every 9 hours on eBay; over Rs 5,000 crore worth of business (domestic and international) materialised through leads generated by Indiamart.com during the last one year.


ICICI Bank alone conducted 17,000 online transactions a day, which is projected to rise to 70,000 transactions a day by 2007, says a source.


Net banking transactions with ICICI Bank account for a little less than Rs 100 crore per month and credit card transactions account for Rs 300 crore per month.


Last year, business-to-customer transactions with the bank accounted for Rs 2,400 crore. This figure is expected to double by March 2007.


[….]


Services like Net banking (32 per cent), bill payments (18 per cent), stock trading (15 per cent), job search (51 per cent), and matrimonial search (15 per cent) have seen tremendous rises.


[….]


On the downside, the country has only around 40 million Internet users (expected to rise to 150-200 million by 2008, depending on whose numbers one follows), around 15 million personal computers, and 12,000 cybercafes (other estimates, though, peg them at around 90,000 to 100,000).


Besides, the country does not have a very healthy broadband pipe (around 2 million subscribers, slated to rise to 20 million by 2010).


Currently, around 800,000 people transact on the Internet every month…. [Business Standard]






Related Links: Internet and Mobile Association of India
e-commerce report. Find out what the rural India is using the net for other than agriculture matters.

2 comments:

Musings on India said...

I think one has to look at this kind of data in relative terms. If one compares any data that was mentioned and compare it in percentage terms with lets say South Korea or China, India is no where close. We in India have become so used to absolute data provided to us by the government that we are forgetting to compare our performance against other nations. Seems dangerous.

Anonymous said...

In India, if e-commerce need to grow it would need more sites deals and comparison sites like singdeals..