According to a report released in April by market research
firm Zinnov, India's mobile commerce market could grow to $19 billion by 2019,
up 850 percent from its current size of $2 billion. Surging smartphone sales (driven
by cheaper handsets) is the biggest driver for this boom. For Flipkart, one of India’s biggest
e-commerce companies, 70% of their sales are now coming from mobile (up from
15% just one year ago).
In addition to traditional e-commerce, India is seeing
innovative e-commerce businesses (moving beyond the retail realm into services)
crop up, focused solely on the mobile consumer. One of such businesses is UrbanClap
that offers hiring services across categories such as health, home and events
via its smartphone app. Similarly, Amber, a mobile marketplace player taps on a
pool of freelance make-up artists, hair stylists and henna artists to provide
on-demand beauty services. Such businesses are likely to be successful in
Indian cities given the high population densities.
As discussed in my previous post, data costs and
connectivity is an issue in India and companies have to think about launching ‘lighter’
versions of their products that consume less data and can be loaded quickly on
a mobile device. Indian e-commerce firms are heavily investing in designing lighter
apps and mobile sites that can load up within seconds and work on a 2G network.
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