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Monday 21 January 2013

M-Commerce in India: Future Prospects

www.irctc.co.in – The official website of the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation has revolutionized the scope and dimension of the Indian e-commerce market which otherwise would not have taken its first baby step towards the future. 

Basking in the glory of the above enterprise from the Indian Government, few travel e-commerce companies like RedBus (www.redbus.in) for bus tickets and Makemytrip (www.makemytrip.com) for flights have tasted fair amount of success. 

However, e-commerce in India is still in a nascent stage. Conclusions from a report released by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), suggest that the total Indian e-commerce market is around Rs 50,000 crore, of which 80 per cent or Rs 40,000 crore is captured by travel e-commerce (online train, bus and airline tickets) while retail e-com or non-travel is only 15 per cent or Rs 8,000 crore.  

With the availability of feature phones or the “smart phones,” Mobile Commerce or m-commerce is also on the rise along with e-commerce where the mobile handset is used as a means to enter into an online transaction. 

With more than 65% of people in India using feature phones, there is an untapped opportunity here too to offer services to subscribers to go beyond the ticketing purposes. 

The future of mobile commerce bears great potential. Approximately 70% of the Indian population is below the age of 40. Of this, a sizable chunk is the youth in the age group of 14-18 who are devoid of a self Bank account and are spendthrifts. M-commerce, especially in India will thrive on this naïve age group and their lifestyle. 

However, is the Indian financial eco-system and mobile infrastructure really prepared to cash-in such a boom which is being driven by high-end marketing and advertising fervor? 

As of now, the answer is NO. Achieving this requires a concerted effort from the bankers and the service providers to ensure and enrich consumer experience with security by expanding the system to accommodate more volumes to benefit all stakeholders and devise law-abiding guidelines to control flow of money and prevent fraud. 

Marginally though, with investors gaining confidence in the growth of the e-com and m-com markets and pumping funds into ventures like flipkart.com, naaptol.com and junglee.com with additional features like “Cash On Delivery,” experts hope that by the year 2025, the total e-com market will reach at least Rs 4,00,000 crore and the share of retail will be half at Rs 2,00,000 crore.  

E-commerce in India is here to stay and grow exponentially over the years