Mastercard survey finds metros splurging on apparels online

A recent study by MasterCard reveals apparels is in the top category across all metros in the

country. And people in Chennai spend the most on clothes and jewellery, followed closely by Bangalore.

MasterCard, said to be the world's second-largest payment and technology firm, opened an analysis centre in Delhi last year. The company is looking at selling information gathered by processing an ever-growing amount of global data that now stands at 10 petabytes or a million gigabytes or provide consulting based on that.

According to MasterCard data, travelers largely from the US, UK and UAE spend mostly on jewellery and giftware. Within India, spending in cities such as Lucknow, Visakhapatnam, Chandigarh and Nagpur is growing more rapidly than in the metros. The company expects India to follow the trends that have been observed in some of Far Eastern countries, where cross-border transactions are becoming routine. For instance, in places like South Korea, people have begun buying directly from America through e-commerce.

According to an Assocham research, India's e-commerce market, which stood at 2.5 billion dollars (over Rs 12,000 crores) in 2009, reached 8.5 billion dollars (Rs 52,827 crores) in 2012 and rose 88 percent to touch 16 billion dollars (Rs 99, 440 crores) in 2013. The survey estimates the country's e-commerce market to reach 56 billion dollars (Rs 3,48,040 crores) by 2023, driven by rising online retail.