Apparels are the fastest growing category amongst online sales of all ecommerce products in India, notes a research paper released by the trade body – ASSOCHAM.
Apparel, health, home furnishings and fragrances/ cosmetics are the few categories which have shown growth in the last 12 years. Online apparels sales chalked the strongest growth with 66% growth, followed by fragrances/ cosmetics posting 12% growth, the paper informs.
India has the third fastest share in online retail marketing adding over 7 million internet users, growing at an annual rate of 15% among BRIC nations, says the ASSOCHAM-comScore joint study.
As per the joint study undertaken by ASSOCHAM and comScore a study titled ‘State of E-commerce in India’, India, Brazil and Russia are quite close to each other but China has surged ahead in online retail.
China continues on the growth path with over 103 retail million internet users by the end of June 2014. The Russian Federation has also surged ahead with a very high growth rate of 32%, adding close to 13 million users.
Brazilian ecommerce is also growing in double digits at 13%, adding 6 million UVs in the last year.
While releasing the joint paper Mr. D S Rawat, Secretary General ASSOCHAM said, “Ecommerce is increasingly emerging as the fundamental sales channel for a growing number of businesses. The internet user base is expanding fast and ecommerce has opened up a big window of opportunity for businesses to expand to new markets with ease and at low cost”.
With 75% of an Indian online audience between the age group of 15-34 years, the female population contributed to almost 40% of total users. India has the youngest online population globally and is expected to be a consistent trend in coming years, the paper informs.
As per the study, age group of 15-24 years has been the fastest growing age segment in the Indian online space with user growth being contributed by both, male and female segments.
The growth has come across all retail categories and most of them show promising transactions and conversion rates along with growth in visitors.
Flipkart, including with the recently acquired Myntra, are the most visited online retail sites with over 26 million UVs in July 2014. Jabong came second with 23.5 million UVs followed by Amazon with 16.9 million UVs. These figures exclude visitors using mobile internet and mobile apps.