Growth of the ecommerce industry in India has escalated since the pandemic. Globally too, the industry grew faster in the previous two years than in the last two decades, owing to the large-scale digitization of commerce. The ecommerce industry is expected to grow to USD 6 trillion by 2026 from USD 3.3 trillion currently. Revenue from Indian ecommerce alone is expected to amount to USD 113.5 billion in 2023 with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13.96%, resulting in a projected market volume of USD 191.4 billion by 2027.
Looking back at 2022, the Indian ecommerce market was dominated by Flipkart and Amazon, with the former hogging a massive 62% GMV market share and US e-commerce giant Amazon at 26% GMV market share during the festive season lasting from September 22nd to 30th. In the same timeline, Meesho did well too with a 21% share of order volumes. Meesho claimed that its orders grew by 135% year-over-year from both metro and non-metro cities.
Apart from Meesho, other digital entities MyStore, Paytm Mall, SpiceMoney, GoFrugal, Dunzo, Shiprocket and Delhivery that have gone live on the state-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) pose a challenge to the Flipkart-Amazon Duopoly. ONDC, which is said to democratize e-commerce in India as a game changer aims to create facilitative models to revolutionize digital commerce, giving greater thrust to penetration of retail e-commerce.
Other magnate players to challenge this industry are Reliance’s JioMart and Tata Digital.
- JioMart which started as a grocery-led e-marketplace during the pandemic, is now a multi-category destination onboarding 20,000 small and medium-sized businesses to sell on its platform.
- Tata’s UniStore (Tata’s fashion and luxury e-commerce marketplace) that runs Tata Cliq raised Rs 1600 crore recently.
- Nykaa started as a beauty marketplace and after expanding into fashion and lifestyle, it plans to enter the international market.
- Etsy is enlarging its reach in the Indian market selling unique and creative crafts.
These marketplaces enable D2C ecommerce solutions to their large customer base and considering recent trends, one can say that the volume of online transactions is expected to gain a lot of momentum in 2023.
As an alternative to these massive marketplaces, you could build a brand name for your D2C store using CommerceUp, an ecommerce platform provider focused on catering the unique necessities of online stores. The platform is scalable, customizable, reliable and aggressive on performance, providing solutions tailored to multilingual, multi currency and multi brand, with an emphasis on mobile commerce. It also aids B2B brands with building customer-centric experiences with headless solutions, by adding new touchpoints and easy integrations with numerous systems.
The Indian eB2B market is rapidly expanding and is estimated to hit $100 billion by 2023. This segment plays a key role in India’s ecommerce industry and has witnessed an unprecedented growth as a result of digitalization of kiranas, numerous emerging B2B-based startups and their abundant investments. Key trends dominating the B2B e-commerce market in India in 2023 will be building sustainable omnichannel business models, technology applications and MSMEs opting for digital commerce solutions along with small retailers. Mobile-first approach with personalized ecommerce solutions will drive this trend.
Speaking of which, ecommerce solutions in 2023 are trending towards a high degree of personalization and are predicted to proliferate in popularity. Contextual personalization will deliver customized experiences to the customer based on their behaviour and data like purchase history, location, purchase time, device used etc. so that marketing messages can be made highly specific. Artificial intelligence powered personalization will be used to quickly collect and analyze vast amounts of customer data, enabling businesses to personalize product recommendations, discounts, etc. Personalized automation of product recommendations and email campaigns will enable businesses to provide individually personalized customer experiences while saving time. These personalization trends were noticed in recent years, but are expected to become more prevalent in 2023.
Another personalization trend in ecommerce for 2023 is the Hybrid commerce model. It’s where online shopping experiences are conflated with the customers’ preferred offline purchasing. As another game changer, it combines the best of both worlds allowing the customer to reap benefits offered exclusively by either end. Now deemed as ‘unquestionably necessary,’ the hybrid model that places technology at its core serves the needs and benefits all components of the ecommerce ecosystem viz. the buyers, the sellers, and e-marketplace brands. Hybrid commerce is predicted to bring about a new-age commerce environment.