According to recent studies more than 150 million people in India are ready for e- commerce today, with a potential of around 595 million individuals by 2024-2025. And rising online sales reveal that e-commerce websites are a growing favourite among consumers.

Going by Avendus Capital’s report on digital consumers, about 8-10 million users are transacting online in India. Subsequently, companies such a Future Bazaar are looking to fine tune their online approach with this emerging trend.

"Lack of Trust" is still a big problem with e-commerce portals in India

In fact, Futurebazaar.com is looking at net sales of Rs. 1 crore per day by March 2012. "E-commerce companies," states Avendus Capital, "are growing on the back of promises to address what the Indian consumer desires the most - convenience, value for the money one spends and availability of his desired products and services."

Flipkart, yet another e-commerce portal is looking to hit its $1 billion target sooner than 2015. Futurebazaar and Flipkart compete with other websites such as Yebhi.com, Infibeam and eBay India.

The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) states the e-commerce market in India to be worth USD $10 billion. The Low SEC is set to increase at a lower rate and the Poor SEC is set to decrease with around 58 million rural households predicted to be part of the ‘Core’ potential of e-commerce consumers.

With more and more consumers opting to buy even expensive products such as mobile phones online, companies have begun to realise that the bigger competition is not rival e-commerce portals, but unorganised retail itself. These portals are not planning to increase revenues and overall e-commerce growth by applying strategies such as decreasing the delivery time of products from the standard 4 days to 3 days, a strategy the Future Group has been exploring.

But even with this visible growth, the tilt towards offline retail is still there. Says Navin Chandani, managing director (India), Experian Marketing Services, "Even though there is still a heavy tilt on the internet for information gathering and product evaluation and selection, actual purchase for many is still a physical world activity."

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