Over the last two decades, rising internet and mobile phone penetration has changed the way we communicate and do business. While in countries such as the US and China, eCommerce has taken significant stride to achieve sales of over 150 billion USD inrevenue, the industry in India is still at its infancy stage.

E-Commerce
In 2005, low cost carriers entered the aviation sector and drove the online travel industry in India, leading to thee-Ticketing sites. The Indian Railways also implementede-Ticket booking and accepted digital payments through credit cards. Eventually, consumers got accustomed toe-Tickets and the doubts regarding online usage of credit cards reduced considerably.

Online Retail
The change in consumer lifestyle, the rise in disposable income of the middle class and the need for convenience acted as catalysts and thus began the era of e-Tailing. Since 2007, we witnessed successes and failures of startups in the e-Commerce market. A few of them made it big in the online retail space that includes companies such as Flipkart, Infi beam, Myntra, ShopClues & Snapdeal. A few others in the space of payments (Paytm), hotel bookings(Oyo Rooms), ticketing (BookMyShow), cab hailing(Ola) etc made success. These portals gained customers through rigorous marketing and also by offering services such as group buying and the daily deal discount models.Industry studies by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) indicates that online travel dominates the e-Commerce industry with an estimated 60% of the market share. This is followed by e-Tail.

Five years ago, in 2012, online shopping was around$ 1 bn and grew at 50% in 2013, the year Amazon made its entry into India. A major growth in online shopping was witnessed with the introduction of Cash on Delivery(COD) and free return options. The price war among sites also brought another feature of comparison to customers where they could review product characteristics and prices featured on different sites. In 2014 e-Tail constituted $3.5bn and neared $ 4.5 bn in 2016 with online sales nearly flat. The last three years saw the merger of Flipkart with Myntra in 2014, Jabong in 2016 and eBay (India) in 2017.

Online Retail Sales Flat Last Year
Out of the 1.2 bn people in India, there are perhaps 200 - 250 m Indians with internet access and credit or debit cards, most of them in big cities. Out of this only a smaller proportion of35 m – 40 m in 2015 shopped online and the number has not grown much since then.

In 2015, Investors have put money in Indian startups at hefty valuations. They backed e-Commerce firms that showed strong sales growth where the investment was used to fund discounts needed to attract more

customers, who were unprofitable but boosted sales growth, attracting new investors and so on

The change in consumer lifestyle, the rise in disposable income of the middle class and the need for convenience acted as catalysts and thus began the era of e-Tailing in the country

From the deluge of funding in2015, the startups have witnessed ad rought in 2016. Online firms ceased subsidising unprofitable sales and focused on limiting their losses,which impacted over all sales.

The last one year has not been good for the startups in India.Funding was not easily forthcoming while the competition has increased the burn rates.

Demonetisation of high currency notes in November 2016 and the new regulations on the discounts that could be given bye Commerce players created its own set of problems.

Not all online firms have been equally affected by the slowdown.While Amazon continued to grow,becoming the market leader now,Flipkart had struggled in 2016 with exit of its senior personnel. Snapdeal is a distant third. In the recent month of July 2017, Amazon.in topped the charts with over 382 million visits. Flipkart clocked in second at 174

million visits (with Myntra contributing to 27 million and Jabong with 42 million visitors). This was followed by Snapdeal with 36million as well as Shopclues with 36 million visitors.

Attempts to merge Snap deal with Flipkart to create a bigger rival to take on Amazon failed to materialize in July 2017. Soft bank, backed by Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son with a one third initial investment in Snap deal, efforts were far from successful in making the merger happen. Softbank's recent investment of $ 2.5 bn in Flipkart would help the firm thwart the increasing domination by Amazon. Mean while, other Amazon rivals like Microsoft,Tencent and eBay have also invested in Flipkart this year.

Alibaba, which over powered Amazon in China, has invested in Paytm, the indian payments company that also offers shopping services. In the future, one can expect moree Commerce companies in India to evolve into similar payments cumshopping platforms. Such a strategy would be similar to the buy and pay model at the base of Alibaba’s rise in China.

The broad sales pattern of retail ecommerce industry is electronics,apparel and other goods. With paucity in funding, the focus has shifted from sales to profits. The question is whether customers will buy as much online if they no longer receive a subsidy from investors (venture capitalists). It is prompting large players to focus on niches, such as fashion or groceries that have thicker margins than smartphones which are barely profitable. The attention seems to be finding ways of making more money from existing customers rather than finding new ones.

Future
Yet the potential of the Indian e-commerce market is irresistible.e-Retail in both its forms: online retail and market place has a huge potential so also online travel. The rate of growth of e-commerce has been healthy and the expectation is that the industry would reach a size of $48 billion by 2020, according to For rester. The factors fuelling this rapid growth are -
• Increasing broadband Internet and 3G penetration
• Rising standards of living and a burgeoning, upwardly mobile middle class with high disposable incomes
• Payment gateways such as netbanking and cash on delivery
• Logistics with importance to reliable delivery
• User Experience
• Availability of much wider Product Range compared to what is available at brick and mortar retailers
• Use of analytics by online retailers

The penetration of e-commerce in India is low at around 20% compared to markets like US (84%) or Finance(81%), but has been growing at a healthy pace with flat sales last year.The industry expectation is that there is a lot of appetite for growth in the future with the Indian consumer getting the benefit of competitive prices.