The e-commerce industry has spread its roots in India at the rocket speed, being one of the fastest growing sector today. Spurring first generation entrepreneurs, large scale manufacturing by SMEs, and most effectively impacting the infrastructure growth of the country.

We already have carve a niche in e-commerce sphere. Although it has been revolving around the globe since a long time and has stepped in India, and marked India as its territory for over a decade now.

It is in the recent years that the appropriate ecosystem has started to arrange itself. Factors like accelerating internet access, mushrooming of mobile phones and robust investment have driven the growth of this industry and if current projections are to go by, India is en routed to be the world’s fastest growing e-commerce market.

Over the last few years we have witnessed a paradigm shift how people or companies buy and sell goods and services. Online retailers have given us an entire new experience in terms of shopping and have transformed the way we use to buy or sell products and services. The sector has seen unprecedented growth especially in the last few years. The homegrown players have shown tremendous growth and magnetized some big bucks. The entry of global giant companies like Amazon and Alibaba has taken the competition to a whole new level.

The banks have also provided ease and safety to use payment gateways. We can effortlessly make sale and purchases using these platforms. However, we still are in growing phase in e-commerce sphere but have a big potential to stand tall on the global platform. The government’s most prestigious Digital India project could take the sector to new heights.

What are the challenges?

The idea of e-commerce is relatively new to us in comparison to the rest of the globe. Though we could witness tremendous growth but we still have to face several challenges like customer mindset (since we are relatively new and we as buyers want to feel the product before we buy), mostly cash on delivery based orders, reachability, poor courier services and other issues which are: return policy, terms and conditions, warranty, guarantee etc.

We have also seen there are several players in the market (big giants like snapdeal, amzon and small startups as well). They offer free delivery on certain purchases and has flexible terms of sale and purchase. They also provide high commissions to their vendors due to which they bear heavy losses just to sustain themselves in the jungle.

Logistics being an integral part of the system also impacts sale. Return parcels, and other complexities related to online sale impact their numbers. This is forcing several e-retailers to establish their own delivery network across the country and might have to engage with multiple shipping methods.

To summarize, the e-commerce websites continuously work towards creating unique ideas. They keep changing their existing business models so that they can attract more customers. Identifying the attractive points to drive frequency of usage with simplest payment methods is the key to success in Indian E-Commerce domain.

Manisha Jha
Young Writer

 

Tags: Businesse-commerce compainese-commerce websitesfuture of e-commerce in India