E-Commerce - 3 Major Challenges in India

India now has more than 200 million Internet users, with 89 million users visiting online shopping sites. The challenge though is that the number of people actually shopping is a fraction of that, at 14-15 million. That is because in developed markets, infrastructure was quite developed by the time e-commerce came in. People had credit cards, the market had gone through TV shopping, catalogue shopping etc. In India, all that is new. What is interesting though in India is that the entire evolution of e-commerce happened over 15 years. In advanced markets like the U.S., it took over 50-60 years. It is moving forward quite rapidly. Industry statistics talk of a 55-60 per cent year-on-year growth, and moving from a $2.1 billion to a $3.2 billion market in 2014. 

Having talked about the such a rapid growth, we also need to look at few of the challenges faced by the e-commerce   sites in India which in the longer needs to be addressed by the companies in order to survive in the market. 

1) Customer Experience: Once the customer logs into the website, he should feel delighted just like the way everyone is expected to be treated when you visit any of the local retail outlet. From experience, I am particularly referring to the shopping experience. Recently, one of the top e-commerce website in India ran a campaign for a Day and offered a products at a heavy discounted rates. At the end of the day, they were even criticized by their loyal customers. Their shopping experience with the server issues and other such problems became a butt of joke on twitter and facebook and left quite a few customer angry. The website owner even apologized for the same saying that there was huge traffic on the website but can we expect the same thing from google or facebook which probably enjoys more traffic than any other website. Hence, there is a need to take customer experience as a first priority to leave your customer satisfied.

2) Delivery Time: Rather than just increasing the no. of products on the website, the company also needs to focus more importantly in reducing the delivery time and deliver within the committed time. Many e-commerce websites in India has built a reputation of not delivering in the committed time. To overcome this, they started by committing the longer delivery time of 7-10 days (also 10-15 days at time) just to be sure to get it done on time. What needs to be done to survive in the longer rum is to reduce this time by proper logistic support and deliver within the stipulated time. In times to come, any firm that can deliver the products within 24 hours will command the market. So reduce the delivery time in your commitment and deliver within that time. Rather than adjusting the timing, adjust the logistic and supply chain.

3) Authentic Product: With the huge no. of sellers, selling the products in all the e-commerce website, there is a need for the quality check. Often you can find people complaining about receiving the damaged good, duplicate goods, products with expired warranty etc. They need to develop the centralized control system in such a way so as to ensure whatever goods are being dispatched to the customer are genuine and authentic.

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