‘M-commerce’ to contribute up to 70% of online shopping

Shopping online through smartphones is expected to be a game changer shortly and industry experts believe that m-commerce would contribute up to 70 per cent of their total revenues.

‘In India, the mobile internet traffic now outweighs personal computer traffic. With increasing penetration of smartphones, India is all set to be a massive market for m-commerce. The marketing strategies for e-commerce companies will increasingly be tailored to suit the rising adoption of smartphones, social media and improving customer experience across touch points and platforms,’ Amazon India Vice President and Country Manager Amit Agarwal said.

He said that more than 40 per cent of their traffic comes from mobile devices.

Mobile internet users in India are estimated to be 120 million compared to 100 million users using 

internet on their personal computers. ‘Close to 60 per cent of our orders are coming over mobile now. It is growing really fast. We get more traffic on the mobile than we get on personal computers. Within the next 12 months over 75 per cent of our orders will be on mobile,’ Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl said.

Fashion portal retailer Myntra.com expects close to 70 per cent of revenue coming through mobiles this fiscal.

‘Myntra.com has witnessed phenomenal activity on the m-commerce front, with smartphones gaining prominence as the preferred mode to access and shop for fashion brands in the country.

‘Currently, close to 50 per cent of our business is driven by m-commerce and with the launch of our Mobile App across all platforms (Android, iOS and Windows), we expect this figure to grow to 70 per cent by end of this fiscal,’ Myntra Chief Product and Technology Officer Shamik Sharma said. M-commerce is estimated to be 30 per cent of the $3 billion e-tailing industry and is likely to grow to nearly 40 per cent of the industry that is expected to be 32 billion by 2020, according to Technopak Senior Vice President, Retail and Consumer Products Ankur Bisen.

Flipkart Senior Director Marketing Mausam Bhatt said e-commerce industry is gradually progressing to be a m-commerce industry.

‘I think the way e-commerce industry is evolving it is becoming more of a mobile-commerce industry. If you look at Flipkart a year ago, less than 10 per cent of our orders, transactions and visits used to come from mobile commerce.’

‘Now those numbers are greater than 50 per cent for us. It is accelerating at a very rapid pace. We are seeing more than 2 times or 3 times growth from the mobile front compared to desktop, where Flipkart is growing overall but mobile is growing at a much faster pace,’ he said. For fashion portal Jabong, m-commerce constitutes 30 per cent of its sales and Founder and Chief Executive Officer Arun Chandra Mohan said it will drive the growth of the sector. ‘The internet penetration is increasing exponentially. The existing users are spending more time on internet. New users are increasing significantly. The mobile users are scaling up. So even in Jabong, we have invested heavily on mobile app.

‘Close to 30 per cent of our revenues is coming from mobile. Penetration is increasing and existing users are coming back very strongly. M-commerce will drive the e-commerce growth going forward and right now it is a very strong enabler,’ he said.

Flipkart's Bhatt said there is an increasing growth in commerce from the non-metro cities which is primarily driven through smartphones.

He pointed out that in India almost 70-75 per cent of the people primarily access internet via their phones, which is driving a lot of growth for a lot of companies. ‘It enables them to expand their market outside of the traditional metro regions where a lot of e-commerce players are historically focused on and that is one of the big driving factors why e-commerce companies are now focusing on the mobile segment,’ he said. He further said m-commerce story in India is proving to be a game changer at the global level. ‘If you look at the benchmark from the US companies or the Chinese companies, the percentage of revenue that is driven from m-commerce in India is significantly higher than lot of those companies and countries,’ he said.

Myntra's Sharma said mobile is an important mode to increase revenues and acquire customers.

‘Mobile is now one of our most strategic channels for driving revenue and customer acquisition. We are investing to build strong technology and marketing platforms that will allow us to accelerate our growth on mobile,’ Sharma said.