E-commerce in India: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Electronic commerce (E-commerce) is buying and selling of products and services by businesses and consumers over the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Consumers take advantage of lower prices offer by wholesalers retailing their products. This trend is set to strengthen as web sites address consumer security and privacy concerns. Due to the popularity of e-commerce there is a tremendous increase exchange of goods and services both regionally and globally. Now-a-days it has become the virtual main street of the world. This online business refers to the E-commerce which is recently moved in to developing countries like India. Today, e-commerce has grown into a huge industry. This paper is outcome of a review of various research studies carried out on E-commerce. The present study has been undertaken to analyze the present trends of e-commerce in India & examine the challenges & opportunities of e-commerce in India. Introduction: The buying and selling of products and services by businesses and consumers through an electronic medium, without using any paper documents. E-commerce is widely considered the buying and selling of products over the internet, but any transaction that is completed solely through electronic measures can be considered e-commerce. E-Commerce is a concept covering any form of business transactions or information exchange executed using information and communication technology between companies and public administration. E-commerce provides platform by which retailers sales and advertise their product and share information on the internet using the information technology like EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) by which more and more customers can attract get to it. E-commerce relates to website of the vendor, who sells products or services directly to the customer from portal using digital shopping cart E-mail is one example of how people collaborate to exchange information and work on solution. Today E-commerce is a backbone in Indian society and it has become integral part of our society life. The first e-commerce site in India was rediff.com. E-commerce allows different payment through debit card, credit card of EFT (Electronic fund transfer) payments. Ecommerce provides multiple benefits to the customers in form of availability of goods at lower cost, wider choice and saves time. Every second three more Indians experience the internet for the first time. By 2030 more than 1 billion Indians will be online. In June last year one in four mobiles used in India was a smartphone, up from one in five just six months earlier. Add in two more facts-India boasts the world's fastest-growing large economy, and the planet's biggest population of millennials-and you can see why the likes of Facebook, Uber and Google are falling over themselves to establish footholds there. Objectives of the study: