Sanjay Agarwal, General Manager, IRCTC started off the Opening session at the IAMAI National Conference on Digital Commerce.
He said that digital commerce is successful across the world mainly because of three reasons
- Availability of rare products online and large choice of products
- Cost
- Convenience
He said digital commerce across the world offers immense value, A consumer can find rarest of products like a XXXL shirt of a style not available in the brick and mortar stores, a consumer can get a discount on the same product when compared to stores and also get it shipped with the convenience of sitting at home.
Sanjay then pointed to the Indian scenario of Digital commerce and stated that around 10,000 Crore rupees worth of commercial transactions took place digitally and that it is growing at 40-50% per annum, he also pointed out that digital commerce in India is predominantly travel, IRCTC and Air ticket booking occupying most of it.
He further added that credit card will not be a natural way for transactions online in the future and that net banking and prepaid cards will take over the digital commerce in India. He said there are two things that digital commerce need to cater in order to be successful
- Value addition
- Trust to consumers, which include prompt deliveries of quality products.
Sanjay Agarwal then pointed out the issues that industry is facing right now, which include
- Low penetration of Internet, only 5% of Indian Population have access to the internet.
- Low Bandwidths
- Lack of Vernacular content
- Clarity on Taxation Issues
- Infrastructure
He then gave a snapshot of mobile commerce in the country and said that it is still very nascent with not even a 4 million transactions /month but it has promise. Sanjay said that going forward E-learning and Retail will be the verticals to watch out for in the Digital Commerce.
R.Chandrashekhar, Secretary, Department of Information Technology then took over the session, he pointed out what exactly digital commerce can deliver to the country, he spoke on how e-commerce can provide the services to the deprived as he believed that the dividend for deprived is the highest as it can enable then to gain added earnings. Mr Chandrasekhar also said, Digital Commerce holds huge importance, especially for the Indian economic structure. He felt that there is a lot of potential for the rural population as the outreach is very important to enable the rural population to gain maximum without having to spend so much by saving on fuel, time and effort etc. Through digital commerce the rural user can access services and data easily and effectively.
All in all the panel threw open questions on opportunities and challenges of digital commerce in India.
