Motorola no more exclusive to Flipkart; to partner with Snapdeal and Amazon

After Xiaomi, Motorola has now ended its exclusivity with e-commerce firm Flipkart; the Moto range of devices will now also be available through select Airtel stores and e-commerce portals such as Snapdeal and Amazon.in.

Motorola re-entered the Indian market last year in partnership with Flipkart to sell its portfolio of devices, including Moto G, Moto E, Moto X and Moto 360 smartwatch. The firm has partnered with Brightstar India to offer its Moto smartphones through a wider range of offline and online retailers, it said in a statement.

Under the partnership, Moto devices will be available through select Airtel stores and e-commerce portals such as Snapdeal and Amazon.in along with Flipkart, it added. Amazon India and Snapdeal will also start offering the Moto E 3G and 4G/LTE from 25 September.

“Responding to growing demand from our consumers we have made a strategic move of increasing the availability of our portfolio across offline and multiple online shopping platforms. To start off, we will be available at select stores for our consumers to experience and purchase the device,” Motorola Mobility India General Manager Amit Boni said.

In April this year, Chinese handset maker Xiaomi also ended its exclusivity pact with Flipkart and begun sales through Snapdeal and Amazon. Since then, it has expanded sales channels through its own portal as well as offline retail.

Buying luxury a costly affair? Not anymore, says Surpluss.in

Delhi-based ecommerce firm Surpluss.in, which sells refurbished gadgets and home appliances, recently forayed into premium designer wear products with the launch of a lifestyle category on its platform. 

The firm, which has tied up with 25 luxury brands, including Guess, Fossil among others -- to retail their manufacturing and trade surpluses at 25%-30% lower prices on its platform-- wants to reach pan-India in the next five years. 

"With this extension, we want to become a platform where consumers can buy any aspirational brand's merchandise at an affordable price. In five years, we want consumers pan-India to visit our website before buying any luxury brand. And we will make sure that we have the availability," Yasharth Verma, Executive Director, Surpluss.in told Indiaretailing.

"Also, the luxury e-commerce lifestyle market in India is expected to grow to USD 25 billion by 2016, on the back of a compounded growth of 25% annually. And we see a huge gap for this sector in the online space," Verma added.

The company intends to make the lifestyle segment 50% of the total business of Surpluss.in and plans to sign up more than 100 market place partners within this year. 

Until recently, Surpluss has been operating through an inventory based model for refurbished electronic goods; with its lifestyle segment, the firm has also moved to a marketplace model. Earlier this month, the company also tied up with Amazon India to sell refurbished smartphones of Samsung , Xiaomi, LG, Lava, among others, on its platform. The move is to empower the latter's refurbished corner.

"In the coming months, we will also invest in upgrading our technology muscle to give a seamless experience to our consumers and brands," Verma stated.

Alibaba Increases Its Investment In Indian Payments And Commerce Firm Paytm

Alibaba has sharpened its focus on India after it made a second investment in Paytm, a mobile payments and e-commerce business.

The investment was made by Alibaba and Ant Financial, the Chinese firm’s financial services affiliate which made an undisclosed investment in Paytm February via a deal that reportedly valued the Indian company at more than $1 billion. This new deal is also undisclosed; however India’s Economic Times reports that Alibaba is spending $680 million to buy 20 percent of Paytm. That lowers Ant Financial’s stake from 25 percent to 20 percent, the report added. So, in essence, Alibaba is now making a firmer commitment having tested the water via the Ant Financial deal.

Paytm, which grew and was spun out of mobile content company One97, bears much similarity to Alibaba’s own constellation of businesses, albeit that it is far less developed. It offers a range of financial-focused services in India, including a mobile wallet app (used by Uber, among others), online recharge (for topping up phone credit and more), and a shopping service. The company said it has been working on “synergies” with Alibaba since taking funding in February, and its e-commerce marketplace is a particular area of focus given that Alibaba practically pioneered the genre in China with its Taobao site.

Paytm claims more than 100 million users of its wallet service, which helps Indians buy items online without the need for a credit/debit card or banking. The startup said the Paytm Wallet clocks more than 75 million transactions each month.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of Paytm said the company is looking “to bring half a billion Indians to the mainstream economy and help millions of small businesses leverage this large m-commerce opportunity.”

That’s very much along the lines of Alibaba and Ant Financial’s own raison d’être. Alibaba’s e-commerce services have opened Internet commerce to vendors of all sizes in China, while Ant Financial — which is independent of Alibaba and valued in the $45-50 billion bracket — has introduced a range of banking services, including its own virtual bank and flexible, micro loans.

With India becoming a more prominent target for U.S. firms than China, as the New York Times recently noted, Alibaba is making its move into India via Paytm.

“India is an important emerging market with strong e-commerce potential, and we look forward to partnering with Paytm to deliver innovative products and services to consumers… This investment will further expand Alibaba Group’s global footprint to India’s thriving mobile commerce market,” Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said in a statement.

Flipkart launches fulfillment centre in Chennai

Owing to an increased demand and with a consistent focus on customer delight, the company has invested in improving the supply chain in Chennai and surrounding areas, Flipkart said in a release.

BENGALURU: Homegrown e-commerce giant Flipkart today announced the launch of its fulfillment centre in Chennai, taking the total warehouse strength in the country to 15.

Owing to an increased demand and with a consistent focus on customer delight, the company has invested in improving the supply chain in Chennai and surrounding areas, Flipkart said in a release.

With the new fulfilment centre, Flipkart now reaches a total storage capacity of over 2.5 million cubic feet, across the country, it added.

"Tamil Nadu, is one of the fastest growing states that has seen an upsurge in demand for technology products like mobile phones. It was hence important to invest in the existing feeder capabilities and serve the ever rising demand from customers," Flipkart COO & Co-founder Binny Bansal said.

Ratan Tata invests undisclosed amount in Zivame

BENGALURU: Online lingerie retailer Zivame has become the latest startup to get funded by Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Zivame recently closed a Series-C funding round of Rs 250 crore from Zodius Technology Fund and Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the strategic investment fund of the government of Malaysia.

"(Tata) invested in the company much before it raised the latest round," said one of the persons aware of the deal, requesting anonymity. ET could not ascertain the quantum of investment.

Zivame and Tata did not respond to email queries from ET.

Tata, after stepping down from an active role in the Tata Group, has become an influential investor in startups. He has put his money into several internet companies and startups including Ola, Cardekho, Paytm, healthcare platform Lybrate and women's clothing brand Kaaryah. Tata also serves as an adviser with Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures, which have both invested in Zivame. He has invested in nearly a dozen of Kalaari's portfolio companies including Snapdeal, UrbanLadder, Holachef, YourStory and Bluestone. Zivame was expecting to close fiscal 2015 with Rs 50 crore in gross merchandise value, or the total retail price of the goods sold on its platform, on a loss of about Rs 35 crore, ET reported earlier.

The estimated market opportunity in the online lingerie segment is large — the total lingerie or sleepwear market in India was valued at $3 billion last year, of which around 1 per cent was online, according to a report by Indian Retail.

Mahindra Forays Into E-Commerce With Launch of M2ALL Marketplace

The Mahindra group on Monday announced its debut into the e-commerce space with the launch of M2ALL.com, an e-marketplace for Mahindra products and services.

The online marketplace has begun taking bookings for the new compact SUV -- Mahindra TUV300. "The new digital platform will offer customers an enhanced buying experience that combines speed and convenience of e-commerce transactions with the trust and reliability associated with the Mahindra group," said VS Parthasarathy, Chief Financial Officer of the Mahindra group.

While Parthasarathy did not reveal the capital that has gone into the venture, he said the operations began with "frugal investments", and will incrementally go up as the business scales up.

M2ALL will enable all the Mahindra businesses to sell products at the marketplace, and going forward, also offer other manufacturers and sellers of complementary products a platform, he added.

Currently, five of Mahindra Group's 31 brands will have virtual stores at the marketplace, and all the brands will be available within the next two years, "as and when their technical back-end is sound", Vijay Mahajan, head of E Market Place, Corporate IT, said.

E Market Place is a 100 per cent subsidiary set up by Mahindra in June this year to look after the e-commerce business, Parthasarathy said. "We want to bring the brick-and-click together. E-commerce is not being seen as a separate channel, but as one of the other channels along with dealers and distributors, to work as a complementary network," he added.

He further said E Market Place has 10 employees and is in the process of expanding its team. M2ALL also offers the group companies and external sellers e-commerce technology, including online catalogue management services, integration with payment gateways, back-end integration, and support services such as digital marketing, data analytics, logistics and call centre services, the company said.

Snapdeal CPO Anand Chandrasekaran on Why 2016 Will Be the Year of Habit

Hot on the heels of the Freecharge Wallet launch, NDTV Gadgets met up with Snapdeal's Chief Product Officer Anand Chandrasekaran at their Bengaluru office to get an update on how his firm is gearing up for the Indian e-commerce industry's 'World Cup Final moment'. He shared his thoughts on why activity metrics matter a lot more than vanity metrics, and why 2016 will be the year of habit.

Last month, Paytm announced that it had crossed a unique milestone that no other Indian tech company had - India's first 100 million user product. The claim hasn't been disputed so far, even though Nimbuzz - originally from Netherlands, and now headquartered in New Delhi, could challenge that claim, as it has 150 million users as of 2013.

"I hope a year from now, we're not looking at who's more successful based on the number of wallets," said Chandrasekaran. "I think as an industry we should set ourselves to accomplish goals that are great for customers. 50 million people trying a wallet means nothing to me." Freecharge could quickly scale to 87 million users by on-boarding all Snapdeal account holders, but the point was not to create users, but to "create habits so that more people use it everyday, creating room for many wins," said Chandrasekaran. Snapdeal believes in activity over vanity, he said, criticizing the industry for chasing vanity metrics, and added that this is common in an industry in its infancy.

In 2013, it was Facebook likes, in 2014, it was app downloads, in 2015, it is chasing the total number of wallets, he said. It means nothing if it doesn't lead to people moving digitally, and adopting a digital payments habit, he added. A lot of activity in the wallet space had indeed been focused on announcements, but there wasn't much conversation around whether it had an impact. "We're kind of focused on the PR and gimmick of it, we have not followed up to find out if 50 percent of those payments have moved to cashless," said Chandrasekaran. "There's no introspection on what we learned, and why we didn't succeed."

For both Snapdeal and Freecharge, the big driver is habit. FreeCharge has 8.2 million daily users said Chandrasekaran, and by this metric, he claimed it is the most used wallet. "But it's still a very small number. We don't feel it's a big badge of honour to say that," he added. "The day would be fantastic where a hundred million people use the wallet every day."

Behaviours are irreversible, habits are very hard to get rid of, he said, adding that Freecharge has built its use case around repetitive transactional behavior, like mobile recharging, electricity bill payment, and metro rides. "The possibilities for a truly open, API-driven, merchant focused wallet is endless," said Chandrasekaran.

To that end, FreeCharge has also partnered with Yes Bank to add banking products on top of the wallet, and with Fino for its rural expertise. Snapdeal has over 25 ideas on how to integrate the wallet; cashbacks could be loaded onto the FreeCharge wallet, for example. The company is organising a company-wide hackathon to get whatever can be accomplished. "The payments engine is going to be completely open. Will be announcing a lot of features, both merchants and product features," he said. "In theory, if another major e-commerce company wants to use the FreeCharge wallet, we're completely happy, because it drives user habit."

Of course, that isn't particularly unique. Wallets that aren't associated with an e-commerce firm, such as MobiKwik, are used as payment options by online sellers, and the same is true for Paytm, which has its own e-commerce store. In many ways, Freecharge is playing catch-up today. Snapdeal's employees are making use of FreeCharge though, in a bid to bring in early feedback to improve the product. Employees have been using the wallet for a few weeks now, with prizes for giving feedback such as money put into the wallet, so they could do more testing. The FreeCharge team is iterating based on feedback, and expects to launch the wallet in a few weeks.

"We want to be thoughtful about this because our combined user base is 87 million," said Chandrasekaran. "Getting into the festive season, we only want the best consumer experience."

Kunal Shah of FreeCharge had previously talked about why the speed of his mobile website was crucial to building trust. At the demo in Bangalore, the FreeCharge wallet took just 12 seconds to complete a transaction. For Chandrasekaran, speed is one part of making a sticky blockbuster product; making a boring thing fun was crucial, as was making the platform secure.

"Our fraud system is so good, we do not need to add a bank transfer fee in order to eliminate those kinds of transactions." he boasted. However, Chandrasekaran did not say anything about the kinds of systems that Freecharge is using, or how many different types of checks and balances it employs to ensure the safety of users' money.

Instead, rewinding back to a prior conversation on Snapdeal's String of Pearls strategy, he said that at that time, there was a lot of pearls, but not much string. "Payments is a fantastic example of that string that binds them together. I have a common account, my identity associated with it, my saved cards, my addresses, and I have cash associated with that account. I can carry back and forth between these products, it's a huge step forward for the company."

 Snapdeal's Shopo, launched in July as an app-only zero commission marketplace currently has close to half a million listings in just two months, roughly around 25-30,000 shops. Since launch, Shopo has made two significant changes to their app - they've made chat more front and center within the product, and added a screening process, which adds to a 10 minute delay to the publishing of the listing.

Chandrasekaran said that the latter improves the likelihood of conversion, while making chat the centerpiece of the app allows users to have a contextual conversation, which might lead to more business later on. "We feel like we have a role to play in defining the principles, but other than that, just letting the ecosystem work its own magic. Our goal is to empower more trust." he said.

Recapping some of the major product announcements, he said that Snapdeal Instant, which delivers package as early as an hour was a fantastic new capability. The computer vision technology used in Find My Style, could used in multiple areas, he said.

"For us boring is good. We don't want drama, or a firefight. We've done lots of drills over the year to prepare for this period. With Flash sales, we're structurally capable of taking 10x more orders. For us at Snapdeal, everything has to be about why the consumer won. When we launched 1 hour refunds, it's obviously a win for us, but it's a win for the consumer too. Everything stops at the feet of making sure we have a fantastic experience this Diwali."

Why Your 50 Percent Online Discount Is Limited to Rs. 150

We've all complained about it in the past - an e-commerce company is offering huge discounts, saying 50 percent off in its ads, but when you go to place your order, you notice the fine print - the deal isn't really a steal and it feels like you're being cheated.

On Paytm, you'll see ads promising 30 percent cashback on a massage chair priced at Rs. 84,000. That's a huge discount - but then you choose the coupon, and you see the fine print - maximum cash back is Rs. 1,500, so you're getting just under 2 percent off.

Foodpanda is particularly annoying - it offers 50 percent off coupons, and in the fine print, tells you that the minimum order amount is Rs. 300, and the maximum discount is Rs. 150. In other words, it's not 50 percent off, at all. It's a fixed Rs. 150 off, with a minimum order of Rs. 300.

It's still a deal and for customers, it's appealing nonetheless, but why are these companies, which are funded by global giants and surely can afford to give out discounts to customers, right?

Except that customers aren't the only ones who take advantage of these deals, and the services that the e-commerce websites rely on (remember, they don't own any restaurant themselves, they're just the middlemen) are more than happy to scam the businesses. A deeply revealing report in Mint looked at the problems that plague Foodpanda today, and one of the issues it highlights is how restaurants found a quick way to turn a huge profit on Foodpanda's 50 percent discount vouchers, with zero effort.

For a little cash investment, and zero effort, restaurants were able to make lakhs in profit. Here's how it worked, as per Mint:

Let's say you are a restaurant. Now, place 10 orders using 10 names or even the same name, each for Rs. 300. Every order is a takeaway. Pay online using the BOGO voucher, a campaign (Buy One Get One) run by Foodpanda. So for Rs. 300, get Rs. 300 free. So for a Rs. 600 order, you paid only Rs. 300. How much does Foodpanda have to return to you, the restaurant? Rs. 600. After deducting 12 percent as its cut, Rs. 528. How much did you make in the process? Rs. 228 . Did you have to deliver that order? Nope. So, a straight profit of Rs. 228.

Now, let's say you processed 100 such orders a day. For a month. Total investment: Rs. 9 lakh. Reimbursed by Foodpanda: Rs. 15.84 lakh. Your total gain, by just processing fake orders: Rs. 6.84 lakh.

In other words, a restaurant would be able to make a profit of Rs. 7 lakh per month, without cooking a single dish, or sending out a single delivery boy. All paid for by Foodpanda's investors.

This isn't new either - people have experienced similar misuse in the early days of online retail in India. For example, sellers would allegedly supply products to Flipkart, and then purchase them back from Flipkart at a highly discounted rate, and then sell the same items back to Flipkart, since they were in demand; making a happy circle of profit. In time, e-commerce firms evolved to prevent this kind of misuse through better logistics, and fraud detection systems built into their platforms, but Foodpanda was - according to the Mint story - more focused on showing order numbers to its investors, to actually crack down on fraud, and abuse of its processes.

While Foodpanda was being scammed though, what makes its particular case more worrying is that the report suggests the company seems to have been mismanaged in many ways. Apart from fake orders, the company also had many fake restaurants in its database, and many of the contracts were allegedly handed out through nepotism and without proper processes. If the details in the report are to be believed, these are very serious issues, which could well become a bigger problem for Foodpanda than fraud.

However, fraud is a common problem that all e-commerce firms need to deal with, particularly as they are racing towards building up the maximum number of users with incentive programs. Uber drivers will happily tell you that they book each-others' cabs to meet the daily incentive numbers that are worth a lot more than a wasted booking. Online retail has been through a lot of fraud and keeps evolving as a result. The new crop of delivery based services, whether it is for food, or groceries, or services, are similarly going to have to evolve.

2.5 crore Online Buyers in India : IAMAI report

Although the final report is yet to be released, scheduled for next month, and results are still being collated, figures indicated by IAMAI’s research show that there are 2.5 crore online buyers in India today, out of 21.3 crore internet users. The Indian e-commerce industry grew by 33% last year clocking sales of Rs 62,967 compared to Rs 47,349 in 2012.

Reasons for growth of e-commerce 

• Better and more internet penetration resulting in higher number of internet users
• Increase in trust level from customers
• Competitive pricing due to increase in number of players in the market
• More secure and convenient transaction systems
• 24 x 7 delivery system and more delivery options
• Lucrative deals and discounts

Opportunity for Indian Online Seller

Online shopping in India has been added to the list of favourite pastimes of people translating into more purchases across different product categories. Reluctant and hesitant shoppers have been won over with sellers’ commitment to quality and service.

Maintain your service levels and do not compromise on quality while adding to your product portfolio. E-commerce is here to stay and grow also facilitating the growth of sellers associated with it. With growing internet penetration and rising awareness of internet usage, more people will start using internet for their purchases.

It Is Official: E-commerce Is Killing Traditional Retail

All recent reports on retail industry in India seem to point to the exact same thing. The future of retail in India is very much online.

The major e-commerce players in India are still depending on VC funds to handle daily operations and steep marketing costs. But, the market, overall is witnessing staggering growth rates. E-commerce players are doing everything in their power to keep their customers happy, from bringing the cart to twitter feeds to letting people try before they buyat the comfort of their homes. And this is bearing fruit!

E-commerce in India – Forecasts and Investment Opportunities

According to a recent Forrester research, 16% of India’s total population of 1.28 billion are online. Unlike developed countries where PC penetration rates have driven Internet adoption, faster mobile penetration is helping boost the Indian Internet population, thanks to the growth of “mobile-only” Internet users over the past two decades.

If we were to go by Statista’s forecasts, the B2C e-commerce revenue in India is expected to reach 7.51 billion U.S. dollars in 2016

Source: Statista.com

Investors are keen to ride the wave and are pumping in a lot of money in the industry as well. A cumulative funding of US$ 1,650.5 million has been raised by Indian e-commerce organizations since 2009, not including the $1 billion speculated to have been raised by Flipkart. Technopak estimates that investments will only expand from the current $2.3 billion to $32 billion (Rs 13,700 crore to Rs 1.9 lakh crore) in the next six years. In fact, in the last year, ecommerce companies have cornered 72% of the $1.3 billion (Rs 7,700 crore) that went into Indian technology companies across 266 deals, according to research firm CB Insights.

As crazy as it looks, this might be justifiable considering e-commerce in India has just reached its tipping point in the eyes of investors. While it might take a long while before the e-commerce companies in India actually start making profits, the increased marketing budgets and the race to be top of mind are playing to the advantage of the Indian Online retailers, about one million of them – small and large – who sell their products through various e-commerce portals.

Big Opportunities for Online retailers

According to Forrester, India’s overall retail industry is estimated to be worth more than US $0.5 trillion. Of that, 92% is estimated to be “unorganized retail” — i.e., small, family-run shops. The organized retail segment (which comprises supermarkets, hypermarkets, specialty stores, and large retail chains) accounts for the rest of the market and is mostly present in tier one cities. The relative under-penetration of the organized retail segment in tier two and tier three cities represents an opportunity for online retailers because retailers in the so-called unorganized retail sector do not have the same product selection as their large chain counterparts.

Crisil Research findings also forecasts the industry’s revenues to more than double to around 18 per cent of organised retail by 2016 from around 8 percent in 2013. Even at this rate, online retail’s share of the overall retail (organised + unorganised) pie will be just over 1 per cent. (That compares with 9-10% in the US and UK, and around 4-5% in China.)

It is time for traditional retailers to move online

The research also compares the deteriorating financials of physical retailers over the past 3 years with the rapid growth of its e-tail counterpart to conclude that online is the way to go, in the future.  Considering that, at an aggregate level, operating and net margins of companies such as Shoppers Stop, Cantabil, Kewal Kiran, Provogue, and Trent have all shown a declining trend this might be a forecast that needs to be taken seriously.

The surge in online retailing is surely not the only reason for the weak performance of traditional retailers. Other factors such as economic slowdown and local competition also play a part in the slowdown. However, what’s irrefutable is that the online upstarts are chomping away offline business.

To stay in the game, traditional retailers are working on internet strategies, and in some cases, promoting their online stores more than their offline channels.  What we are witnessing in India today played out in the US about a decade-and-a-half back.

It is no longer enough to just be offline, it is time brands – small and big – start working on their online strategies. In fact, with the right strategies, they can give their online counterparts a run for their money. Walmart is a clear example of how a big box giant can evolve into an online innovator.

With the restrictions on FDI expected to ease out, the competition could only become more intense. But it also opens a plethora of opportunities for the ecommerce industry and online retailers.

The verdict is pretty clear. If you have started selling online, your business is on the right track. If you are not, it is probably time to pull up your sleeves and jump in. There are many players in the market that already provide end to end solutions for SMEs that want to start selling online. After all, numbers never lie.

Delhi Biggest Online Shoppers, 1 in 4 Indian Buys Through Mobile

Do you know which industry is the biggest benefactor of bad roads and increasing traffic in India? It’s the ecommerce Industry. Nearly 76 percent of the respondents from ASSOCHAM survey said that they find it much easier to do shopping from the comfort of your own desk or  smartphones or tablets to type out a search phrase and click “buy” than have to undergo a mall excursion.

And when it came to online shopping, Delhi people beat the rest of cities in India. Over 67% Delhiites prefer online shopping over the regular shopping with available deals online than in brick and mortar. Mumbaikars (60%) came in second, Ahmedabad (52%) third and Bangalore (50%) fourth in their preference for online shopping.

The survey pointed out that shoppers are increasingly taking the online route to escape worsening road traffic, increasing fuel prices and lack of time.

Another interesting find from the survey was that nearly 20 to 25 percent online sales is now being generated by mobile devices, an increase of around 10-15 percent compared to last year.

Growth of Indian E-Commerce Market

There is a reason why VC’s are pouring in big money into Indian ecommerce space. The e-commerce market stood at roughly $2.5 billion in 2009, it went up to $6.3 billion in 2011 and to $16 billion in 2013 and is expected to touch whopping $56 billion by 2023 which will account for nearly  6.5% of the total retail market.

Source: Trak.in

Highlights of the report

• Majority of the shopping happens from workplace, between 12noon to 4 pm on a working day
• More than half of the sales happen on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and dips on weekends
• 55% respondents shop online during lunch hour or during closing hours.
• Indian E-Commerce companies are targeting 40% revenue from mobile sales in 2015
• Fasted growing age group that shop online are between 18-25 years.
• Among existing shoppers, 35% are in 18-25 age group, 55% in 26-35, 8% in 36-45 and 2% in the age group of 45-60.
• 65% of Online Shoppers are male as against 35% female.

Most Products Bought or Sold online

According to the survey most products bought & sold off through online comprise of

• Electronic gadgets (58%)
• Books (42%)
• Gift articles (41%)
• Railway tickets (39%)
• Accessories & Apparel (36%)
• Computer & peripherals (33%)
• Airline tickets (29%)
• Music (24%)
• Movies tickets (26%)
• Hotel rooms (20%)
• Magazine (19%)
• Home tools and products (16%)
• Home appliances (16%)
• Toys (16%)
• Jewelry (15%)
• Beauty products (12%)
• Health and fitness products (12%)
• Apparel gift certificates( 10%)
• Sporting goods (7%)

While convenience of shopping online is one of the main reasons, some of the other reasons why Indians are increasingly shopping online are product availability, good discounts, detailed product information, product comparison and saving of time!

The survey ranks Flipkart, Amazon and Myntra as the top 3 ecommerce players in India, followed by Shopclues, Dominos, Freecharge, Jabong, Tradus, eBay and Snapdeal. It is interesting to see Snapdeal ranking so low, as in terms of Sales they are probably second  largest after Flipkart.