Thursday 30 July 2015

Paytm Backs $50M Funding For Zovi, India-Based Online Fashion Retailer

ZOVI an India-based online men’s fashion retailer, has raised $50 million to build “Little,” a mobile-only app to list a large number of “hyper-local” deals offered by offline merchants to consumers online.
The funding round is led by One97 Communications, which operates Paytm, a mobile wallet and online marketplace, in which Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has a stake. Existing investors Tiger Global Management, SAIF Partners and a new unnamed large investor also participated in this funding round, Zovi said, in a press release on Wednesday.
The app will list “real-time hyper-local deals to customers across services like restaurants, movies, hotels, salons, gyms and spas,” according to Zovi.
More people access the Internet and related services in India using their smartphones than PCs, and India is projected to become the second largest smartphone market in the world by 2017, overtaking the U.S. This has prompted e-commerce startups to aggressively promote a “mobile-only” sales strategy, increasingly forcing consumers to download mobile apps if they want to shop online.
Zovi founders Manish Chopra, a former Microsoft Corp. executive, and Satish Mani, a former senior vice president at travel startup Cleartrip.com, expect to build Little into a large business that will target a consumer lifestyle marketplace, they said, in the press release.
Little will use the funds to build a network that connects merchants with buyers, hire senior executives and build new technology to focus on the Indian “online to offline” market, which is estimated to be worth $64 billion by 2016, according to the press release.
Zovi plans to grow Little to offer more than 50,000 live deals across 11 cities by March 2016, presenting a “discovery platform” to consumers on the one hand and, on the other, a strong sales channel for offline merchants, whose deals will be listed on the app.
The app currently lists deals from some 5,000 merchants in 11 cities and Zovi estimates Little will end the current fiscal year on track to sell deals worth $170 million. The company expects to increase its staff strength to 1,000 by then, from 400 employees today.
Paytm’s investment in Zovi brings with it a partnership that will tap into the former’s mobile wallet that consumers can use to pay for deals on the latter’s app.

Ecommerce companies, tech startups like Flipkart, Amazon are India's biggest office space takers in H1

Riding on the back of humongous investments and rising valuations, ecommerce companies and technology startups outpaced IT/ITeS firms for the first time as the biggest office space taker in the country in the first half of the year. 

Companies in this segment leased more than 6 million square feet of office space, or over 35% of the total, according to property research firm Knight Frank. Flipkart leased 3 million sq. ft. in Bengaluru with Embassy Office Parks, Amazon took 1.3 million .. 

Top startups like Flipkart, Snapdeal & Ola join unicorn club of firms with $1 bn valuation & hire seasoned executives

Flipkart, Snapdeal and Ola — the first three Indian startups to join the unicorn club of firms with $1 billion valuation — are increasingly hiring seasoned executives in key roles to help introduce new initiatives as well as to keep the boat afloat as they grow into big, multi-layered organisations.

Flipkart, the country's top ecommerce player, for instance, has brought in Krishnendu Chaudhury and Ravi Garikipati all the way from the Silicon Valle, to head image sciences and to play  .. 

Wednesday 29 July 2015

E-commerce: Amazon, Flipkart, rival cos fuel commercial property boom in India

Last year, Jabong, Myntra, Flipkart and Snapdeal had stopped delivery to cities in Kerala as the state’s commercial taxes department had banned their cash on delivery (COD) mode. Despite a brief spell of vacuum in online retailing in the state, the companies had resumed their COD services. Officials, however, insist the ban was still in place.
The state’s commercial taxes department has reportedly said it will make the swoopdown on other online retailers too. “Since the online retail firms do not have brick-and-mortar showrooms, their websites will be treated as showrooms that display products and prices. If the products are sold to local customers, regional taxes will be applicable. All transactions are taxable,” said a senior official.
The sales tax department has said the companies have been penalised for evading taxes for the last two years and that they are looking at other online retailers too. Once found guilty, they will also be fined, tax officials.
As per Kerala’s department of commercial taxes, the online retail falls “under the purview of the definition of business, trade, goods and sales as per the General Clauses Act 1897, Sales of Goods Act 1930, Transfer of Property Act 1882 and Kerala Value Added Tax Act 2003. The state is confident that it will succeed even if the companies approach the court.
Offline traders in Kerala, who have high stakes—considering the state is among the country’s toppers in household monthly per capita expenditure as per annual studies conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation – have also been complaining of sales tax evasion by online players. “Every day, at least R10 crore worth of products are sold by online retailers. Since they can evade the state’s tax net, they can pass on discounts to the tune of 16% to the customer in the state. They do business at the opportunity cost of offline traders, who also have to cough up on overhead costs like showroom and staff wages,” E Binny, president of the Kerala Samsthana Vyapari Vyvasayai Samithi, told FE.
Besides active consumption behaviour, which makes Kerala more vulnerable to online retail transactions, there is the high literacy rate and high Internet penetration. “In any case, a state, which is dependent on commodity taxes, cannot afford to ignore the tax revenue from online retail transactions,” said Jose Sebastian, faculty, Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation.
Before Kerala’s taxmen, their counterparts in Karnataka had banned Amazon’s Indian arm from selling electronics and a few other select products from its warehouses situated in the state.
Meanwhile, a Flipkart spokesperson said: “It is our endeavour to be transparent in all our dealings with authorities. We are compliant with the laws of the land in which we operate and will work together with the authorities to ensure that there are no information gaps between us.”

E-commerce: Taxing times for Flipkart, others, as Kerala slaps Rs 54-crore penalty

The harshest penalty crackdown came on Flipkart at Rs 47.15 crore, followed by Jabong at Rs 3.89 crore, Vector E-commerce at Rs 2.23 crore and Robemall Apparels at Rs 36 lakh

 The companies that have come under the scanner are Flipkart; Jabong; Vector E-commerce, which has a stake in Myntra; and Robemall Apparels, which operates garments retailer Zovi.com.

 

Tuesday 28 July 2015

Working on e-retailing strategy: Godrej

Consumer durable major Godrej Appliances on Sunday said it is working on differentiated online strategy for its products in the wake of deep discounting by e-retailers. 

"When it comes to discounting by the online players, we are working on a strategy of differentiated offering with our strategic online partners so that together we offer a value to the end consumer which is not based on the discounted price but on the overall product proposition," Godrej Appliances business head & EVP Kamal Nandi told PTI. 

"Online sales today are growing by leaps and bounds. E-tailing has successfully created a buzz and connect with the consumers. Going by the performance in the past year, we feel that this emerging channel has huge potential," he said. 

Presently, the mix of online in the overall sales is three per cent. 

Along with online strategy, he said, the company is also strengthening physical sales channels. 

"We plan to increase our footprint by 15 per cent in this fiscal. Currently, we are present in over 25,000 outlets across India with over 6,000 outlets in the East alone," Nandi said. 

He said in two years the company would open 100 exclusive brand outlets contributing nearly 3-4 per cent to its turnover. 

"Currently in the consumer appliances industry, about 10-12 per cent of sales are made through EBOs as a sales channel. It is bigger than e-commerce and is growing at an annual rate of 20 per cent," Nandi said.

Online luxury retail growth highlights tier II, III opportunity

Luxury retail is steadily climbing new heights in India, thanks in large part to the internet! Geographic boundaries are no longer a limitation for luxury aspirants. In India, luxury retailing is projected to grow at 25 per cent from 2013 till 2018 and is likely to touch the $18 billion mark from the current level of $ 14 billion. Having said that, India accounts for a mere 1-2% of the global luxury market. 

Speaking to Indiaretailing on how online commerce has impacted luxury retailing in India, Nakul Bajaj, CEO of the luxury products’ online marketplace, Darveys.com, sheds light on the anticipated future of online posh shopping.

"There is immense opportunity in the online luxury fashion business,” Bajaj says. “Luxury products’ sales are steadily touching new heights.”

"Though the start was slow, luxury fashion has eventually garnered its place in the digital universe. Most brands now communicate with users both through their own branded online store and on multi-brand e-merchants. Technological innovations, increase in purchasing capacity of shoppers, a growing positive perception of the internet as a channel for safe and convenience shopping, higher average annual expenditure and need to own luxury fashion goods will boost growth in the coming years," he adds. 

Talking about the response that Darveys.com has garnered, Bajaj notes, "To become a member of the elite fashion culture at Darveys, our customers are requested to pay a membership fee of Rs 1000, which ensures extreme exclusivity and a priceless shopping experience. Despite minimal marketing strategies, Darveys has already acquired a building block in the luxury e-commerce world."

"Darveys’ fundamental objective is to create a web platform in order to simplify the purchase of an aptly priced luxury fashion product from the comfort of consumers’ homes. Shopping for one’s favourite designer product(s) by going through our customer friendly shopping process has been more than a pleasurable experience for all our customers. Darveys is a gateway for the Indian populace to be able to browse the inventory of over 300 luxury label boutiques."

Elaborating on key territories and shopper behaviour across the country, Bajaj opines, "Maximum orders have been tracked from Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, West Bengal, Chandigarh, Haryana and Tamil Nadu. Darveys.com has successfully managed to touch and impress different parts of India!”

“But something really interesting is the kind of repeat purchases we receive from smaller tier II and III cities; it is higher than our overall average of repeat purchasers," he points out.

The marketplace has tie-ups with 70-plus international label products (out of which 35 are exclusively available with Darveys.com). The products have been procured from 285-plus partner boutiques- set up across the globe. 

“These boutiques are the authorised dealers of the brands. Hence, Darveys.com acts as facilitator of these brands, helping them in reaching potential customers in India. A few labels to name are: Tory Burch, Dolce & Gabbana, Chiara Ferragni, Prada, Hugo Boss, Love Moschino, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, Valentino, Manolo Blahnik, Lulu Guinness, Cavalli and many more,” Bajaj informs. 

Talking about the modus operandi of Darveys.com, Bajaj explains, "Darveys is set up on international marketplace model instead of the inventory-led model. Through us, boutiques across the globe get a platform to sell directly to customers; this allows a huge range of products which can be made available to Indians who initially never had access to these products."

Mobile commerce and hyperlocal, the next wave in digital India

“It’s not business…its personal”, said India’s largest online fashion retailer Myntra, when they decided to shutdown their Myntra.com website services in May to run their business solely through their Myntra app. This move was based upon the rapid expansion of the smartphone market in India and the countrywide growing mobile internet user base. According to a report published by ‘We Are Social’, a global social media agency the share of internet traffic is about 27 percent on laptops and desktops, 72 percent on mobile phones and only 1 percent on tablets. India is now the second largest mobile phone market with more than 930 million customers. With such a market potential offered by smartphones, ecommerce giants have already launched their mobile applications and they have been pushing offers exclusively on their apps with the aim of getting consumers on to the platform.
Another reason for an increase in mobile commerce is smartphone penetration in rural markets. Online retailers are taking advantage of this increasing penetration to tap market opportunities in Tier II and Tier III cities. Thus mobile commerce is likely to overtake ecommerce in the upcoming few years.

Getting hyperlocal

‘Hyperlocal’ is perhaps the new buzzword in the ecommerce industry and has managed to rattle ecommerce giants. Hyperlocal is the next wave in the mobile commerce revolution. An increase in the number of mobile-first start-ups in this space and growing interest of investors shows the amount of potential of hyperlocal marketplaces. This has made possible the delivery of everything from groceries. medicines, laundry, food and much more, directly from nearby stores, along with faster delivery and less shipping cost. Consumers are becoming more aware and feel comfortable getting everything with just the click of a button or touch of a finger.
Hyperlocal commerce essentially consists of firms that cash in on technology and are able to connect the local retailers with the consumers in a particular area. These firms have advantages like lower logistics costs, negligible inventory costs and less delivery lead time. Another benefit hyperlocal firms enjoy is that of content or offering customisation based upon the demographics of their target market.
Hyperlocal startup firms are attracting investors interests increasingly because of the huge potential that exists in this space. Since the beginning of 2015, hyperlocal startup firms like PepperTap, ZopNow, Jiffstore, Grofers, Woolpr and Zopper have raised big money.

Challenges in the hyperlocal marketplace

Hyperlocal marketplaces have challenges like any other business model. In terms of competition and their vulnerability in this space, the ecommerce giants are trying to setup their own hyperlocal platforms. Global ecommerce giant Amazon has launched its express delivery platform ‘KiranaNow’  an app-only platform to cater to hyperlocal deliveries. The project was launched as a pilot, but this clearly is an indication of rising competition in the hyperlocal space. Having an efficient and reliable network of local partners and delivery capability is essential to provide prompt services to consumers with least cost and least lead time. Investing in technology, data and process can make the services more successful. In order to outsmart the competition, the firms need to be careful about the economies of scale and profitability. With the increasing scope of hyperlocal marketplaces, there’s the potential for mergers and takeovers since the number of players emerging in this space is immense. Finding  an appropriate and suitable niche in the market is the key to sustainability. Thus the one who can cash in on the 4 R’s of Responsiveness, Reliability, Resilience and Relationship can be the one who can influence and make an image in the minds of the consumer.
Thus with businesses focusing their energies solely in the area of apps, the consumers can also expect improvement in service quality. Initially when hyperlocal delivery concept was taking shape, few consumers were aware and were not ready to accept that someone can deliver goods and services from their local areas directly to their doorsteps. But with increased use of smartphones for convenience and consumers getting pro-technology, mobile commerce and hyperlocal can surely be the next wave for digital India.

Monday 27 July 2015

New ventures take root as ecommerce players seek to tap mobile users

Whenever Jafer Khan, a 22-year-old student in Chennai, runs low on money for mobile data, he sends his two cents' worth to the country's largest ecommerce firms. He makes a quick buck filling surveys on which mobile application introductions failed to convince him or by reviewing new app features.

Khan may not know it but he is essential to the mobile strategies of online marketplaces, which onboard peop .. 

Amazon wants to build drive-up grocery stores

If you enjoy the luxury of ordering groceries online but would rather not wait at home for your food deliveries, Amazon might soon come to your rescue. Silicon Valley Business Journal understands that Amazon is working on a drive-up grocery store in Sunnyvale, California (a possible concept rendering is shown here) that will rely solely on internet orders -- you'd schedule pickups instead of wandering aisles. Think of it as anAmazonFresh depot that could save you shipping costs while adapting to your schedule.
Amazon isn't commenting on the project, and it's not clear just how many of these stores will pop up. The Sunnyvale experiment is likely to expand to other areas in Silicon Valley, but there's no certainty that it'll ever rival a big chain like Safeway. However, there's no question that the concept makes a lot of sense for Amazon. It eliminates many of the headaches associated with shipping food directly to your door (how do you deliver a mix of fresh and frozen foods, for example?) while giving you an incentive to skip traditional supermarkets. You'd miss out on the joy of discovering tasty treats at the store, but you also wouldn't have to spend more than a few minutes getting your weekly sustenance.

Shopclues takes the cloud route to be the ecommerce operating system

As online market-places in India transition to offer a bouquet of products and services, Tiger Global-backed ShopClues wants to be the ecommerce operating system on cloud. 

To help its existing sellers expand offline, ShopClues will aggregate services such as marketing, logistics and advertising on digital channels to help them target the hyperlocal market. 

"We have a seller base of two lakh on .. 

Saturday 25 July 2015

Jewellery e-tailer Voylla.com embraces omnichannel, to open 25 offline stores

Jaipur-based online jewellery retailer Voylla.com is likely to close a $10 million Series A funding round by next month.

Speaking to Indiaretailing, Jagriti Shringi, Founder and COO, Voylla, confirmed the news and said, "Yes, we are in talks with a few investors. However, we will not be able to share any details about them right away. We will be closing this round of funding by next month. "

Launched in 2012, Voylla.com sells jewellery and accessories for men, women and kids on its own portal as well as on other online marketplaces. It currently has three offline stores in Bengaluru, Pune and Nagpur and is planning to use the fresh funds to strengthen its offline presence, for new recruitments, and to add more features on its new mobile app. 

"We are planning to launch 25 shop-in-shops across the country in tie-up with retail chains like Future Group’s Central and franchisee stores in most tier-II cities by end of this year," Shringi informed.  

The startup offers more than 10,000 designs in imitation, silver and 14-18-karat gold jewellery under its portfolio. All the pieces are designed in-house at a company warehouse in Jaipur. "We have a wide variety and styles of both imitation and precious jewellery on our portal. Precious jewellery starts from Rs 12,000 and goes up to Rs 50,000, while non precious pieces are priced between Rs 99 and Rs 7,000-8,000,” Shringi said.

While the portal has grown by 400% year-on-year and the number of visitors have increased by 30%, Shringi feels that consumers still like to touch and feel jewellery products before buying. "While the online channel is working very well, its contribution is a mere two per cent while the rest is from offline sales. Though is an era of omnichannel retail, the offline channel cannot be ignored by any brand," she noted.

Elaborating about this O2O (Online to offline) model Jagriti adds," Moreover, we have managed to collect a lot of data about consumers prefence, their shopping behaviour, price sensitivity etc through our online portal. Now its time to bank on the data collected and create a seamless shopping experience for our consumers".
 
Voylla.com reported revenues of Rs 6 crore in the last financial year. Around 70 per cent of its revenue is derived from jewellery while accessories account for the remaining. The average order ticket at Voylla is Rs 1,100. “We expect to clock Rs 33 crore in revenues this fiscal on the back of the offline channel multiplication,” Shringi said.

Indian Angel Network invests in e-commerce player Shopatplaces

IAN member B Hari, who has also joined Shopatplaces’ board, led this round of investment, the investor group said in a statement in Mumbai.
The company was founded in 2012 by a team whose members had a background in supply chain and investment banking.
“IAN’s investment will enable us to further build our product portfolio and service. Moving ahead, we plan to improve marketing to reach our target customer segment and scale up technology, front-end and back-end infrastructure,” Zuhaib Khan, co-founder of Shopatplaces, said.
Shopatplaces is focused on apparel and accessories currently, and also offers curated jewellery, bags, shoes, home decor and fragrances, the company said.
It will enter the personal care category and extend services across the country from next month. Subsequently, the company will also source and deliver international geographic speciality products, it added.

Friday 24 July 2015

Bezos' boundless India love: Amazon to invest $5 bn more to launch Prime services, expand

India's e-commerce story is getting spicier day by day.
A report in The Economic Times today has said that Amazon, which started its Indian operations just two years back and committed a $2 billion investment last year, has readied another $5 billion war chest for aggressive expansion in the country. The plan, according to the report, is to make India the biggest market outside the US.
The company is also planning to launch Amazon Prime in India later this year. Amazon Prime is a subscription-based service offered by the company. Subscribers of this scheme get to avail of big discounts and at times even free services. It has services such as instant video streaming, music streaming, video sharing and unlimited photo storage on Amazon cloud.
Amazon chief Jeff Bezos on his visit to India last year. Reuters
Amazon chief Jeff Bezos on his visit to India last year. Reuters
It will also increase the number of warehouses and data centres. The big-bang strategy will take on rivals Flipkart, Snapdeal and Paytm, said the report citing people aware of the plans.
"...We are really long on India, investment figures are easily in multiples of billion dollars," one of the sources has been quoted as saying in the report.
Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud platform, had said on 29 June that it plans to open a new infrastructure region in India.
“Tens of thousands of customers in India are using AWS from one of AWS’s eleven global infrastructure regions outside of India,” a report in Geekwire quoted Andy Jassy as saying in a press release.
"Several of these customers, along with many prospective new customers, have asked us to locate infrastructure in India so they can enjoy even lower latency to their end users in India and satisfy any data sovereignty requirements they may have. We’re excited to share that Indian customers will be able to use the world’s leading cloud computing platform (AWS) in India in 2016 – and we believe India will be one of AWS’s largest regions over the long term,” the release said.
With the e-commerce giant's investment plans, Flipkart and Snapdeal are likely to see heightened pressure. As the ETreport rightly points out, the big impact will be on the valuation of these companies, which is already sky high.
Flipkart has until now raised $3 billion. This Forbes article says the company is raising $500 million from Tiger Global at a valuation of $15.5 billion. Snapdeal, meanwhile, is valued at $5 billion. The valuation of e-commerce companies has been soaring in the recent past. As the competition hots up with Amazon's aggressive India plans, the companies will have to raise more funds to win more, if not retain the existing, market share.
Meanwhile, none of these companies, which offer deep discounts to woo customers, have yet started making profits. A recent report in the Businessworld magazine said Flipkart losses Rs 2.23 for every rupee it earns, Amazon was Rs 1.90, and Snapdeal Rs 1.72.
The report further said, citing data from Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), Singapore, that Flipkart's losses had widened to Rs 1,028.9 crore in FY14 from Rs 544 crore a year earlier. Its turnover in FY14 stood at Rs 2,937.7 crore. Snapdeal, meanwhile, incurred losses of Rs 530 crore.
All the three companies have spent Rs 9,774 crore on discounting and reverse logistics in the last financial year, theBW report said. Reverse logistics is the transportation of goods that are rejected by customers back to the company's warehouses. Discounting and reverse logistics are the two major strategies of these companies to woo customers. A UBS report recently said Indian e-commerce companies will have to continue burning cash until 2020, when they are likely to turn profitable.
But despite all these the Indian e-commerce industry continues to be a very attractive bet. The reason is the huge potential. According to UBS, the market will grow to $50 billion by 2020.
"...We estimate the India etail market could be worth $ 50 billion by 2020, growing 10x from the current level. This is not a conservative estimate and assumes wide acceptability of online purchases by Indian consumers and etail companies overcoming the challenges of logistics and banking," it said.
“We see huge potential in the Indian economy and for the growth of e-commerce in India,” Amazon chief Jeff Bezos had said last year while announcing his $2 billion investment in the country.

Fresh trouble for Ecommerce: Vendors losing money as buyers turn back cash-on-delivery orders

BENGALURU: City-based Gurudatt Nadiger started selling containers, vessels and other home requirements on major ecommerce platforms this February. After five months and over 15,000 units sold, Nadiger realised that he had lost more than he had gained, particularly when product after sold product was returned to him. "If a consumer orders a product and then returns it, I have to pay for the logistics for both ways, plus commission, plus tax. For a product costing as less as Rs 200, if the customer returns it, we incur Rs 80-100 on all this," he said. Cancellations and returns are a big problem that all online sellers face. The risk is especially high in sales made through cash on delivery (COD) mode of payment, which has been one of the defining pillars of India's ecommerce boom. 

While the number of mobile wallet users is estimated to jump five-fold from the current 3 crore to 15 crore by 2019, COD still accounts for 60% of all ecommerce orders, according to financial advisory firm Motilal Oswal 

"In COD, a customer is not committed to the purchase, but the seller still ships the product. Consumers today are not willing to wait longer than two days and might buy the product elsewhere and reject the delivery," Nadiger said. According to Sellerworx, a business management platform for ecommerce sellers, 70% of all returns are made up of customers who do not accept deliveries, of which a majority are cash-on-delivery arrangements. In this case, merchants are still charged commission. As India's largest ecommerce companies race to enlist more merchants on their marketplaces, the push to make consumers pay digitally is also gaining pace at companies such as Snapdeal. 


The Delhi-based company, which reports 1,50,000 sellers on its platform, is making a significant effort to encourage customers to pay for products upfront using debit and credit cards. "As more customers opt for prepaid payment options, we have seen significant efficiencies being built into our digital commerce ecosystem," said a spokeswoman for Snapdeal, which sold merchandise worth an estimated $3.5 billion at the end of May

Flipkart popularised cod first

Market leader Flipkart, one of the first online retailers in the country to popularise the cash-on-delivery model, remains agnostic about which payment method customers choose. "We do not have any preference for payment methods as such. But we believe customers should have all the possible payment options available to them for online shopping," said Neeraj Aggarwal, senior director of last-mile delivery. By the end of this year, Flipkart expects to have so
me 1,00,000 sellers on its platform sell merchandise worth $10-12 billion.

But mobile wallet Paytm, which launched its ecommerce platform in February, has seen its cash-ondelivery orders drop from 10% in the beginning to 5% now, said founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma. "We have the least returns because consumers pay in advance, and merchants prefer that," he said, adding that this may be a trend. 

Analysts are of the view that apart from the loss due to returned goods, merchants also take a hit on credit cycles, when customers pay with cash. "In a cash transaction, merchants receive money only after a product is delivered, for the extra few days, the vendor needs more working capital. There is a cost to it," said Gaurav Gupta, senior director at Deloitte India.

Globally, cash on delivery has proven to be a popular strategy in growing online retail, particularly in emerging markets such as China, Russia and several Southeast Asian countries. However, in China — one of the largest markets for ecommerce — the proportion of cash payments has dropped from 70% in 2009 to 30% last year, giving way to mobile payments, according to business intelligence firm Asia Briefing.

Experts believe a similar trend will follow in India as well. "India is still a cash economy to a large extent, so it will not phase out immediately," said Vishal Gaur, associate dean of Cornell's Johnson School of Management.

"But single workers or working couples are generally comfortable using credit cards or mobile payment options. So it's really a question of the target market."