M-commerce is the way ahead for e-tailers

With increased mobile internet penetration, e-commerce players feel that mobile commerce (m-commerce) is the way ahead for them. Most e-tailers, who currently have 35-40 per cent of their overall sales coming from mobiles, expect the same to surge to over 70 per cent in the coming years.

According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Forecast, mobile data traffic in India is projected to grow 24-fold between 2013 and 2018 at a CAGR of 88 per cent.

Peyush Bansal, CEO & founder, Lenskart.com, "For lenskart.com it has grown five times in last 18 month years as percentage of total business." He expects it to double over the next 12 months. It currently gets 40 per cent of business from m-commerce.

Most e-commerce players feel the same. According to Aasheesh Mediratta, CEO, Fashioandyou.com, from a current 40 per cent, his firm expects the share of m-commerce to double over the next 12-18 months. He also feels that "Most of the growth experienced in e-commerce last year is essentially led by mobile; if ecommerce is growing at 55-60 per cent CAGR, m-commerce has grown at three to five times the rate in last year or so." He points out that more than 120 million internet users browse web through their smart phones whereas desktop users are only 100 million. Interestingly, the repeat traffic for fashionandyou.com from mobile phones is 75 per cent while that of desktop or laptop is 60 per cent.

Some like Vikram Chopra, CEO & Founder, Fabfurnish.com, expect the growth to be even steeper. From a current 35 per cent business generated by mobile and tablet users, in two years, Chopra expects his firm to see over 90 per cent business to come from mobile. "This year we are already reaching 60 per cent traffic on mobile on weekends and holidays. Therefore, it is a very strong trend," he added. At the moment, about 40 per cent of m-commerce would be driven by mature categories like books, mobiles, electronics etc. Chopra feels that the home and furniture segment is moving in the same direction.

But, how does the Indian scenario compare with other countries where e-commerce is more mature trend; Bansal says, "India is largest consumer market after China in volumes, as spending power and consumption increase, technology based smarter ways of doing businesses are natural favourites to take the advantage."