Ramping up the Direct to Consumer E-commerce Revolution in India

The Internet base is rising very quickly in India – from 170 million in 2015 to 650 million in 2020, post Jio and is projected to reach 850 million by 2025. With this, the number of online shoppers is also growing very fast – from less than 100 million in 2015 to 400 million today, and is expected to reach 550 million in 2025.

The share of e-commerce as a percentage of the overall retail market is on a growth curve as well – it was a mere 1 per cent in 2015 and is projected to go up to 15 per cent by 2025, which is a huge technology shift.

These stats were shared by Abhishek Shah, Founder & CEO, CommerceX, who gave some interesting insights on ‘Direct to Consumer E-commerce Revolution in India’, in his keynote address at DIGIXX 2020 Summit & Awards.

Adding further, Shah said that the digital influenced shoppers can also be leveraged by the traditional legacy brands.

He added, “If you also notice, the share of modern trade share is actually going down, as e-commerce is eating into most of the modern trade’s share. At the same time, the COVID-19 era has made it clear that kirana stores are not going to go away and will, in fact, become more important. I think this trend will stay and this will be a consumer behaviour shift, and this is the right opportunity for brands to leverage.”

Putting things in a wider perspective, Shah said, “If you look at the evolution of the first Industrial Revolution, it was about mass production. The second Industrial Revolution was about scale; and the third Industrial Revolution, what we have gone through in the last 10 years, has been about globalisation and outsourcing. The next phase that we are seeing is relocalisation – and what I also call, personalisation, and that is where D2C or Direct To Consumer really fits in, because that’s the only medium where you can directly talk to the consumer and customise and personalise, and build one to one relationship.”

According to him, the impact of this is that 2/3 of consumers expect direct brand connectivity, that is, the consumers expect the brands to connect directly and speak in their language, and almost 67 per cent of consumers have used a brand’s social media site for engagement, so it is these digitally aware consumers that companies are targeting.

“When we talk about personalisation and reaching out to the consumer directly, building one to one relationships, this is a fundamental shift in the way of brands operate. When we talk about going to the consumer and selling it online to the consumer directly, the capabilities required actually merge, so this is where I think the brands will need to invest in building new capabilities, and this is the area where brands will struggle the most. The opportunities are clear for all, but how do you really build these new capabilities – from technology to CRMs to call centres to logistics, to the whole digital marketing – this is the whole part where brands will need to adopt.”

Click here to watch Abhishek Shah's interesting address

 

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