India’s ecommerce market on an aggressive growth track

India's ecommerce market is expected to witness significant uptrend in coming years and touch 200 billion dollars (over Rs 13 lakh crores) in gross merchandise value (GMV), says a Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML) report. The global financial services company said that the ecommerce sector's GMV forecast is likely to increase on improving telecom infrastructure, faster adoption of online services and better variety and convenience and the number of shoppers is likely to touch 530 million.

“We estimate 2025 GMV now to be 10 percent higher at 220 billion dollars (over Rs 14,50,000 crores),” BofA-ML said in a research note, adding that “the faster and reliable 4G networks (due to higher capex by telco operators) would help accelerate online sales.” BofA-ML further said, “We expect structural changes to consumer usage patterns with increasingly consumers preferring to buy online at the expense of offline companies.”

“We are now raising our industry GMV forecasts on the back of improving telecom infrastructure, faster adoption of online services due to increasing awareness and better variety and convenience,” the report added.

As per the brokerage firm, Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal (investee companies of the global titans Amazon, Softbank, Naspers and Alibaba) are likely to dominate the market. Online festive sales this year were higher than last year, with the leading companies reporting three to four times higher sales compared to last year. Further, the customer base was more broad-based with close to 50 percent of the sales coming from outside top six cities, according to Canvaas-India survey.