India among top e-commerce markets in Asia: Report

The Indian e-commerce market is expected to reach US$ 6 billion in 2015, a 70 percent increase over the 2014 revenue of US$ 3.5 billion, said Gartner, Inc., the organizer of the Gartner Symposium/IT expo in Goa, India. The four-day expo ends on October 17.

Praveen Sengar, research director at Gartner Inc., said, “With a $3.5 billion market, growing at approximately 60-70 percent every year, India represents less than 4 percent of the total retail market. B2C e-commerce leads the market in India, while B2B is limited to organizations that drive online channels to integrate with their partners and distributors.”

“The digital commerce platform market is maturing; incumbent vendors are investing in building out their commerce platforms, and those in adjacent areas, such as search, order management and marketing — both through organic development and acquisition,” he added.

Sengar said, “Vendors are increasingly focused on execution and winning new customers, sometimes at the expense of articulating future vision. Merger and acquisition activity is increasing, resulting in fewer digital commerce platform options in the market, but also serving to extend the commerce platforms of the established vendors.”

Digital commerce facilitates a purchasing transaction over the Web, and supports the creation and continuing development of an online relationship with a consumer or business customer across multiple retail, wholesale, mobile, direct and indirect sales, call center, and digital sales channels.

Mobile commerce is finding increasing traction in mobile shopping. It will help organizations skip the desktop wave with increasing penetration of affordable smart devices with connectivity and a rapidly growing ecosystem to engage customers on mobile. Thirty percent of traffic for e-commerce sites come from mobile and tablets.

Digital companies will expand investments in personalization, digital marketing, Web analytics and big data in order to stay competitive. India has approximately 200 million users on social networks, and it is an important channel to understand and engage with customers.

Indian organizations will look at SaaS or open source platform-based digital commerce till the market matures and digital commerce revenue stabilizes.

The B2B model is leveraged to drive efficiency in the supply chain. The biggest challenge is getting the business digital commerce strategy right and adequate investments in people, process and technology to engage with customers across channels. (GK)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India