The Global E-Commerce Market and Where Does India Stand?

We’ve been talking a lot about numbers, facts and figures related to the Indian E-Commerce Industry of late. The subject will again be center of discussion at E-Sparks 2011. But before zeroing in on the Indian story again, we thought it to be appropriate to set the reference by throwing in a few stats regarding the bigger picture.Forrester Research recently estimated that e-commerce now accounts for revenues close to $200 billion in the United States alone, which is 9% of the total retail sales. This number was at 5% five years ago. The corresponding figure is about 10% in the United Kingdom, 3% in Asia-Pacific, and 2% in Latin America.

Renowned Times Of India columnist, SA Iyer stated in his latest Swaminomics column that - in the massive annual shopping spree during the Thanksgiving season (end of November) in the US, 39% of consumers said they bought goods mostly through the internet, against 44% who mostly bought from brick-and-mortar stores and hypermarkets. The share of internet retail has constantly been on a rise.

Another important point made by the Forrester Research is that digital retailing is now pretty profitable. Amazon’s five-year average return on investment, for example, is 17%, whereas on the other hand, traditional stores average 6.5%. The west has been riding this wave for more than a decade now and this is approximately the amount of time taken by a new technology or trend to sweep through the developing countries like India.

We believe in the Indian E-Commerce story and we believe E-Sparks 2011 will clear the doubts in many minds. Join us as we showcase 15 top E-commerce startups selected from across India. For more details, please visit esparks.yourstory.in