New Delhi: As the festive season kicks in amid economic slowdown, e-commerce marketplaces have geared up with a strategy to focus on tier 2 and 3 cities to help double their sales compared to last year.
“The e-commerce market is booming in India, especially as more people continue to join the digital bandwagon from tier 2 and tier 3 cities. It is unlocking a new digital market wherein buyers and sellers can easily transact with each other with touch-of-a-button experience,” said Saahil Goel, co-founder and CEO of Shiprocket, a logistics platform for small and medium businesses. Shiprocket says it has witnessed 75 per cent increase in its monthly order volume during the last festive season. “This year, our Festive Season Trends study reveals that there will be double growth during the upcoming festive season. This is a very positive development and we look forward to it,” said Goel.
The report says online direct-to-consumers (D2C) SMBs are expecting a promising 100 per cent growth as compared to last year’s festive sales. This is because customers are now getting more comfortable buying products online outside of marketplaces.
Marketplace sellers will grow by 30 to 50 per cent on an average with the expectations of over 100 per cent growth in categories like beauty, health and apparel, according to the report conducted with a sample size of 1,900 sellers across the country.
While health and beauty products have emerged as fast-moving products in tier 1 cities so far, home and kitchen products have picked up considerable traction in tier 2 and 3 cities.
During the study, sellers highlighted that timely delivery of shipments and visibility of their products on large marketplaces are their two biggest concerns this festive season. Besides, after the general market trend and stringent regulatory policies, consumer discounting during this festive season will be relatively lower.
This will to a great extent affect the moving volumes via e-commerce platforms and force people to look for other market alternatives.
Service providers like Shiprocket have been able to optimise logistics infrastructure using data and artificial intelligence to offer seamless shipping solutions for every online seller. The platform has partnered with over 15 logistics providers enabling sellers to ship products across 26,000 pin codes in India and to over 220 countries globally.
India’s largest e-commerce marketplace has also onboarded nearly 27,000 kiranas across 700 cities to its pan-India supply chain, helping it reach out to millions of new consumers during the upcoming festivities.