Podcast: E-commerce's Second Bloom

Interesting. Can't wait to get my hands on the next edition of Forbes India. I am an aspiring E-commerce entrepreneur and over the last months of my research and analysis, I have come across certain key challenges in operating from India. The first and foremost being the very low plastic money penetration in India. Even though, by your calculation there are on an average 20-30 million people with regular internet access in India, the total plastic money penetration is only around 9-10 million. Thats why companies like flipkart and other introduced the COD or Cash on Delivery model, which drastically improved their revenues. Now, this would be a serious risk for a newbie in the E-commerce space. And also, the trend is only slowly catching up now. If the writer of a cover story about E-commerce has not purchased a single retail product from a website, I wonder how other people will be willing and forthcoming to buy things on the internet.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that E-commerce has indeed started growing. The number of online merchants popping up in India right now is the one and only indication for that.