“TierII and TierIII towns driving Digital Commerce in India”, says Muralikrishnan B, Director, Marketing & Product Management, eBay India

Muralikrishnan B, Director, Marketing & Product Management, eBay India, in an exclusive conversation with YourStory.in

Drivers of Digital Commerce in India

While the adoption of digital commerce is very high in the Metros but TierII and TierIII towns are the ones which are truly showing a rapid growth in adopting to digital commerce. There could be a multitude of reasons for the same but one single reason I would like to highlight is the fact that digital commerce brings “availability”.

Just to give an example, if someone sitting in Nagercoli in Kanyakumari needs the latest IPhone sure he can get it… with lot of difficulty he will have to travel to Trivandrum which is the nearest big town and he can find the IPhone, but then there is the cost of travel involved, and moreover the price of the phone could be higher than what he could find elsewhere. Now enters the Internet (being the leveler that it is), it provides this person sitting in Nagercoli an IPhone at his doorstep with the same cost as it is in Mumbai. Internet is increasingly becoming a great leveler and empowers a lot of people in TierII and TierIII to increasingly adopt to online shopping. Everyone has access to the same TV and content, people are aware of products in the market, it boild down to availability which internet is providing at marginal shipment cost etc.

mCommerce – is the “trust factor” limiting its growth?

mCommerce is at a very very nascent stage in India. It’s in the 1^st year of a long life span. To me it`s not the question of trust but the convenience of usage. It’s all about developing a fantastic engaging model. Today there are plethora of devices available in the market be it the IPhone, Blackberry or Android. Also it’s not just about developing an extremely engaging user experience but the crux also lies in smartphone penetration. Once that penetration goes up we can easily develop the engagement model which can drive mCommerce. Trust is just a cliché story of 1995. People are not worried anymore. People are evolved.

E Commerce – Value in the Eco System

Today a lot of clones are coming up in the marketplace. It is not a sustainable model. New players /entrepreneurs should concentrate on building value differentiators and strong proposition for consumers; this will bring a lot of value in the eco-system. Standardisation of processes, transparency will be other key drivers of E commerce in India