E-shopping witnesses boost, while physical retail suffers

While brick-and-mortar stores are finding it hard to lure customers

to shopping, established as well as new e-commerce players like Snapdeal, Flipkart, Jabong and Yebhi have been able to do brisk business during the December holiday season. Offering discounts from 10 to 60 percent, and sometimes even more, these platforms performed extremely well compared to the apparel brand and retail stores.

Apart from discounts, services like free home delivery, cash on delivery, instant or same-day delivery, convenience of exchanging an ordered product and so on, made customers log in on to the shopping portals, instead of actually driving to the malls or stores. And though people visited malls to watch films or eat at the food joints, they just indulged in window shopping when it came to shopping for apparel and accessories.

A Technopak study had said, e-tailing market in India is pegged at 1 billion dollars (around Rs 6,180 crores), growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 60 percent. While Snapdeal saw their sales grow five times in the past one year, Yebhi witnessed sales accelerate since Diwali. Since online retailers also negotiate with brands and vendors to bring down prices, it leads to price cuts by 20-30 percent for buyers.