'Firms need to instill confidence in customers for online transactions'

KOLKATA: Principal Secretary of state Information Technology (IT) & Electronics department Rajeev Kumar raised concern over the Indian e-commerce numbers and opined that India was lagging behind in this area inspite of huge opportunity for businesses to grow. Kumar called for the companies to instill confidence in Indians about the safety and security of online transactions.

"Indian customers even today are not confident in electronic mode of payment so we need to instill confidence among them in this regard. China holds 53.64 per cent (as of 2020) of the global e-commerce market, and India is at 1.29 per cent," Kumar said, while addressing at the maiden initiative of CII Eastern Region, e-Commerce Conclave: The Road Ahead.

Kumar said with enormous potential for India to grow in e-commerce the country also needs good connectivity, large data centres and boosting of software ecosystem. He further added that China's e-commerce revenues have raced ahead of the rest of the world, generating US$2.8 trillion sales in a year, which is equivalent to the Indian GDP.

Delivering the inaugural address Ambareesh Murty, Co-founder & CEO, Pepperfry, stated that, businesses will have to think through their strategic aspects and embrace the metaverse as an opportunity to expand their brands. According to Mr Murthy, there has been a paradigm shift in the entire gamut of customer purchase and experience and the shift for the internet is already well underway. The webinar had deliberations on Future of e-commerce and meeting customers' rising expectations