obody saw it coming. Nobody wanted to. It was, after all, the summer of 1999.

The spirit of the times was heady and a thousand entrepreneurs had bloomed. Fabmart and Firstandsecond.com wanted to be the Amazon the giant book store of India. Rediff was selling knick-knacks on its e-commerce channel. Sify too had joined the bandwagon. Apnaloan was promising to sell loans online. Shaadi.com wanted to find your dream other. And then on April 4, 2000, Nasdaq crashed. K. Vaitheeswaran, the CEO of Indiaplaza, remembers the moment vividly. Many venture funds of that vintage perished. Entrepreneurs were worse off. There were almost 1,000 e-commerce businesses in India at that time. All of them closed down, says Vaitheeswaran. In the space of six months, dotcom had gone from meaning hip, cool; inheritors to nave, paper tigers; lambs to the slaughter. Hell had frozen over. But so much chaos, so much life had been unleashed. Could something have survived spirit, derring-do the carnage? Kapadvanj, a small settlement of 50,000 people, is an hours drive from Ahmedabad. It hasnt changed much in the last 10 years. Yes, there are a few more cars and thanks to DTH and payper-view, the latest movies get screened much faster, but life moves at an easy pace. Of course, the Internet connection is much more reliable. And Rinkal Shah is all grown up now. This 26-year-old Web designers house in Triveni Park has all the things you would find in a modern house: LCD TV, DTH set top box, laptop, refrigerator and of course Shahs favourite, Nikon D5000 digital SLR.

Shah bought all these things without setting foot inside an electronics store. He just ordered all of it online. All put together, it must have cost at least Rs. 2 lakh. I get most of the products on the fourth or fifth day after ordering, at prices lower than physical stores. Free home delivery is a given. And the products are always box packed unlike physical stores like Croma, which have offered me products in open boxes saying it was their last piece, says Shah. In the age of the ever ubiquitous World Wide Web it is hard to shock people, but when a 26year-old guy in a small town starts buying stuff worth a couple of lakhs without touching the products or without asking the salesman 101 questions, it is time to ask oneself what Marvin Gaye, the singer, asked: Whats going on?. Hitesh Dhingra, the founder and CEO of Letsbuy.com, the online store from where Shah bought his Nikon D500, would simply say: e-commerce is whats going on. Dhingra started Letsbuy in 2009, quitting his job at Tyroo, a digital advertising firm. By December 2010, Dhingra was selling between Rs. 75 lakh and Rs. 1 crore of electronics every month, causing three venture capital firms to invest $6 million into his company. Today, sitting in his three-storey building off Aurobindo Marg in Delhi, Dhingra says his site has grown to 10 times over the last six months and expects to be doing monthly sales of Rs. 25 crore by December this year. If you thought that was fast, wait till you hear Dhingras ambition: Rs. 2,000 crore in revenue over the next three years.

Where honeybees go, the bears follow. Led by an aggressive charge from a New York-based investment fund, Tiger Global, venture capitalists are virtually stampeding to invest in ecommerce startups. Publicly, they have invested nearly $140 million into these companies in just the last six months, compared with just $48 million in all of 2010. Add deals that havent yet been reported or are close to being signed, and the number shoots northward of $200 million. Suvir Sujan, partner, Nexus Venture Partners and former co-founder of Baazee, says: If not two, we must have met at least one e-commerce entrepreneur a day in the last six months who are looking for financing. Entrepreneurs and investors had stopped thinking really big over the last decade, says Rajesh Reddy, the founder and CEO of July Systems, a mobile solutions company based in Bangalore. But big-sized ambitions hyper growth is back today! he adds. Reddy is also one of those few entrepreneurs who have been doggedly managing and growing online businesses in India during the last decade. In the last 10 years, China has created giant e-commerce companies like 360buy, TaoBao and Tencent. Russia has Yandex and Mail. Brazil has Mercado Libre and BuscaP. And these companies came about because funding sources in these geographies did not dry up the way they did in India. Indian e-commerce is playing catch up. So, could something have survived the carnage of 2000? It sure looks like the spirit of ecommerce has shot through a wormhole and appeared in a different place and time: Bigger and hopefully better than before.

Read more: http://forbesindia.com/article/boardroom/ecommerce-in-india-the-secondcoming/27042/1#ixzz1lcgDYTzY

E-Commerce in india - Is the Indian customer ready to Flip the Cart Online? There is a recurring debate on the future of Indian E-Commerce and often time there is a comparison made between companies that sprung up during the dot com like Fabmart and Firstandsecond.com that wanted to be the Amazon of India and the companies of this day and age like Flipkart and LetsBuy that are at the forefront of the second innings of E-Commerce in India. The question is asked of this second inning being a dream innings for some of these companies or once again these companies end with the same fate. I present the logic below as to why the E-Commerce in India is ready to take off. Many of the companies that were started back then were by engineers turned entrepreneurs returning from US, they had worked in some of the great startups of that time Ebays and Amazons and thought by simply transporting the idea to their home country would eventually transport the money as well and they would be riding home the Corvettes like their American counterparts. Well as the history goes ... some 1000 such businesses that came up during that time eventually had to close down. The reason ?? Well there is no doubt the business idea of selling stuff online was a million dollar one and no doubt the people who were at the driving seat were some of the best (Elite Indian Brains) but there was a fundamental problem. Back home there were no Interstates and hence these superfast ideas met with the fate of driving a superfast car on Indian roads... aka a super crash. Well this time around we might not have the interstates but we sure do have the county roads (Growing population of All Time-Online Users) to support these Super Ideas (After all we just hosted the F1) Read more: http://forbesindia.com/article/boardroom/ecommerce-in-india-the-secondcoming/27042/1#ixzz1lcgWuqg6

Ecommerce in India

Magazine subscriptions
without comments While it is convenient to place an order online, it is sometimes difficult to co-ordinate delivery of the product ordered due to factors beyond your control. The courier / delivery person can deliver the product at any time of the day. Ordering magazines online is more convenient than most other products, since most magazines are sent by ordinary post and the recipient need not sign an acknowledgement. The cost of each magazine copy is usually less than Rs 100. Many magazines offer an online subscription option on their website, but if you wish to subscribe to a number of magazines, signing up at each website can be a very cumbersome process as you have to enter all personal details like name, email, telephone number separately . There are some online aggregators like Infibeam, Pustak and Magazinemall which allow you to order a number of magazines using a single account. Processing of the subscription usually takes two to four weeks, after which you start receiving magazine copies. Many of the magazines which can be ordered online have a limited circulation and are not easily available at most newspaper stalls. Of the monthly magazines subscribed for some time, Consumer Voice, Alive and Caravan have been delivered regularly on time. Tehelka magazines which is published weekly also has a very efficient delivery system, but the delivery mechanism of some other weekly current affairs magazines could be improved, as many copies are missing. Written by comm January 19th, 2012 at 7:33 pm Posted in buying,ecommerce,payments,price,product

Popularity of online shopping

without comments Some of the reasons why online shopping has become popular in India are: 1.the entire transaction is recorded. Since the specifications, discounts and payments are documented, the seller cannot make false allegations against the buyer. 2.convenient home delivery. An article on this trend. http://business-standard.com/india/news/watch-out-retail-giants-online-majors-aim-forsky/458867/

Written by comm December 18th, 2011 at 4:16 pm Posted in buying,ecommerce,payments,price,product

E-commerce website design and conversion rates

without comments The conversion rate at a website depends to some extent on the user interface. A well funded startup selling conventional products, can use any of the shopping carts available, but if the billing method is different, a team of programmers are needed for developing a suitable website. Finding a good programmer can be a difficult task, especially if you do not have a programming background or a large budget. A lot of testing is required to remove any bugs before the new interface can be used, which is time consuming. The checkout process is comparatively difficult to debug as payments have to be made. A new startup may not be able to afford this, but this can affect sales and customer experience. Written by comm November 16th, 2011 at 5:55 am Posted in buying,ecommerce,payments

Quality control
without comments If a defective product leaves the companys premises, rectifying the error at a later date is expensive for the company as it usually involves a lot of adverse publicity as well as expensive returns. So it is important for an e-commerce company to have proper quality control systems, to ensure that the product shipped does not contain any defects and there is no damage or pilferage by couriers during transit. In the short term, shipping a faulty item may help get rid of inventory, but in the long term, it can be very expensive. The cost of customer acquisition, some one who spends a few thousand rupees annually is often more than Rs 2000 . Finding a high paying/ spending customer is much more difficult. So if the company fails to ensure that proper checks are in place, they may lose a customer for life and directly affect their future growth. Written by comm October 4th, 2011 at 1:09 am Posted in buying,courier,ecommerce,payments,product

User interface
without comments One of the factors determining the conversion rate of an e-commerce website is the user interface. If the website is easy to use and the customer can find the product he or she wants quickly, a visit is more likely to convert into a sale. On the other hand, if the user has to spend a lot of time, searching the various options, they may decide to postpone placing the order. Unlike computer and other hardware products, the user interface design can be a major factor for a buyer purchasing clothes and accessories. Most online stores offer a number of variations in clothes like colours available and sizes. So a buyer has to use the drop down menu to check whether his or her preferred size and colour are available. If these are not in stock, the buyer has to check the other options available. There are many fashion websites which regularly conduct sales, and only limited numbers of a particular item are available. If the website is designed with a drop down menu to check the availability of different sizes of a particular product, just finding which items are available can be very time consuming. Though it may involve some amount of programming, eliminating these minor irritants can greatly boost sales. Written by comm September 6th, 2011 at 1:28 pm Posted in buying,ecommerce

Defective items
without comments At times, when you buy a product online and it is defective / not working as expected, the online store will compensate you by offering the following: 1. Refund with no compensation for the inconvenience you have faced while ordering the item 2. Gift voucher you are obliged to spend an equivalent amount at the store, despite having an unpleasant shopping experience 3. Replacement The unlucky buyer has to spend time and money returning the item, and if the timelines / procedure for refund are not clear, it is better to keep the defective item and try to get it repaired locally. Written by comm August 28th, 2011 at 12:43 pm Posted in buying,ecommerce,price,product

E-commerce complaints
without comments Though forums are littered with complaints about E-commerce websites, many of these should be taken with a pinch of salt. There are some e-commerce companies who are professional in their dealings with customers and you can expect the same level of service consistently over a period of time. There are other companies which take undue advantage of the customisation that e-commerce offers to deliver poor quality products to unsuspecting customers. The easiest way to check if a customer complaint is genuine is to ask the customer for an order reference number. Most e-commerce websites follow a particular sequence in order numbers Some of the reasons a customer complaint may not be real are 1. Fake complaint by a competitor 2. Customer has received the product but claims he or she has not received it, to claim a refund. Written by comm August 11th, 2011 at 12:12 pm Posted in buying,ecommerce,payments

Retaining customers
without comments In any business, it is well known that it is easier to retain an existing customer than acquire a new customer by various methods (acquiring a new customer online is said to cost an e-commerce website between Rs 500 to Rs 2000) . However many e-commerce websites do not care too much about retaining existing customers.(for reasons best known to them) Some of the mistakes e-commerce websites (or their vendors) make. 1. Send defective items that do not work at all 2. Send poor quality items that will stop working after a few days 3. Delay shipping the item deliver it 30+ days after order placement 4. Customer support does not reply to emails 5. Cancel the order without assigning a reason 6. Have poor quality photos on the website (the actual product differs significantly from the photo displayed) Any e-commerce website which overcomes the above problems is sure to be a success in India

E-commerce Companies of India

E-commerce companies in India offers the most tangible and finest e-commerce solutions, provide high end e-commerce solution taking utmost care of the privacy and security of the ecommerce website. E-Commerce service includes shopping carts,database programmers,graphic design services,graphics,e-business,Flash designs etc.

List of Top E-commerce Companies of India:

99labels.com: This site offers many fashion and luxury brands at good prices.Check this site for more brands . Dealsandyou.com: This site offers various kinds of deals be it holidays,shirts etc. Also this site gives heavy discounts on regular basis that cab be profitable for the shoppers.Browse this site for more. Fashionandyou.com: This site also is a great place to shop and that too sitting at home.Also this site declares sale and heavy discounts almost every day.Sign Up today to get more deals. Flipkart : This site offers various kinds of products and that too at one place.Mobile,its accesorries,books,camera and laptop accesorries and many more things are available on this site.One can find deals for home appliances also that are available at affordable prices.Check this site. Indiangiftsportal: This is known for providing gifts for various occasions like birthdays,anniversary,wedding,bhai dooj,diwali and many more.Also flowers,cakes,chocolates and many more things are offered by this site.Browse it today to send gifts to your loved ones.

Timtara.com: It offers many products under each category. For example,computer category has products like Antivirus, Blank CD/DVD, ePAD, Harddrives, Headphones, Keyboard, Laptops & Notebooks, Memory Cards, Mouse and much more.Browse this site for more categories and more products. Yebhi.com: This site also has variety like watches,sunglasses,mobiles,cameras,jewellery,Home and kitchen appliances and many more things.

Caratlane.com : This site offers various kinds of products and that too at one place.Mobile,its accesorries,books,camera and laptop accesorries and many more things are available on this site.One can find deals for home appliances also that are available at affordable prices.Check this site. Myntra: The site offers fashionable clothes for men,women,kids. Also this site has products of almost all the famous brands.The prices quoted by this site are also affordable. Naaptol: The site offers products like mobiles,cameras,laptops,jewellery,gifts and what not.check thi s site. Snapdeal:

eCommerce Growth
According to Forrester Research, US online retail reached $175 billion in 2007 and is projected to grow to $335 billion by 2012. Business-to-consumer (B2C) eCommerce continues its double-digit year-overyear growth rate, in part because sales are shifting away from stores and in part because online shoppers are less sensitive to adverse economic conditions than the average US consumer. Despite the continued growth of the channel, online retailers face several challenges to growth: Online stores are broadly perceived as a second choice for shoppers, online retail is becoming increasingly seasonal, and online shoppers rarely admit to browsing, which can drive valuable incremental dollars during their Web shopping experiences.

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, ecommerce, eCommerce or ecomm, refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. However, the term may refer to more than just buying and selling products online. It also includes the entire online process of developing, marketing, selling, delivering, servicing and paying for products and services. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at one point in the transaction's life-cycle, although it may encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail, mobile devices and telephones as well. A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely in electronic form for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website, but mostly electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes known as etailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers are now electronically present on the World Wide Web. Electronic commerce that takes place between businesses is referred to as business-to-business or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or limited to specific, pre-qualified participants (private electronic market). Electronic commerce that takes place between businesses and consumers, on the other hand, is referred to as business-to-consumer or B2C. This is the type of electronic commerce conducted by companies such as Amazon.com. Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce where the buyer is directly online to the seller's computer usually via the internet. There is often no intermediary service involved, and the sale or purchase transaction is completed electronically and interactively in real-time. However in some cases, an intermediary may be present in a sale or purchase transaction, or handling recurring or one-time purchase transactions for online games. Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of business transactions.

Early development

Originally, electronic commerce was identified as the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. Another form of e-commerce was the airline reservation system typified by Sabre in the USA and Travicom in the UK. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee invented the WorldWideWeb web browser and transformed an academic telecommunication network into a worldwide everyman everyday communication system called internet/www. Commercial enterprise on the Internet was strictly prohibited by NSF until 1995.[1] Although the Internet became popular worldwide around 1994 with the adoption of Mosaic web browser, it took about five years to introduce security protocols and DSL allowing continual connection to the Internet. By the end of 2000, many European and American business companies offered their services through the World Wide Web. Since then people began to associate a word "ecommerce" with the ability of purchasing various goods through the Internet using secure protocols and electronic payment services.

Timeline

1979: Michael Aldrich invented online shopping[2] 1981: Thomson Holidays, UK is first B2B online shopping[citation needed] 1982: Minitel was introduced nationwide in France by France Telecom and used for online ordering. 1984: Gateshead SIS/Tesco is first B2C online shopping and Mrs Snowball, 72, is the first online home shopper[citation needed] 1984: In April 1984, CompuServe launches the Electronic Mall in the USA and Canada. It is the first comprehensive electronic commerce service.[3] 1985: Nissan UK sells cars and finance with credit checking to customers online from dealers' lots.[citation needed] 1987: Swreg begins to provide software and shareware authors means to sell their products online through an electronic Merchant account.[citation needed] 1990: Tim Berners-Lee writes the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, using a NeXT computer. 1992: Terry Brownell launches first fully graphical, iconic navigated Bulletin board system online shopping using RoboBOARD/FX. 1994: Netscape releases the Navigator browser in October under the code name Mozilla. Pizza Hut offers online ordering on its Web page. The first online bank opens. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online. Adult materials also become commercially available, as do cars and bikes. Netscape 1.0 is introduced in late 1994 SSL encryption that made transactions secure. 1995: Thursday 27 April 1995, the purchase of a book by Paul Stanfield, Product Manager for CompuServe UK, from W H Smiths shop within CompuServes UK Shopping Centre is the UKs first national online shopping service secure transaction. The shopping service at launch featured WH Smith, Tesco, Virgin/Our Price, Great Universal Stores/GUS, Interflora, Dixons Retail, Past Times, PC World (retailer) and Innovations.[4] 1995: Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.com and the first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio start broadcasting. Dell and Cisco begin to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay is founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb. 1998: Electronic postal stamps can be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web. 1998: Alibaba Group is established in China. And it leverage China's B2B and C2C, B2C(Taobao) market by its Authentication System. 1999: Business.com sold for US $7.5 million to eCompanies, which was purchased in 1997 for US $149,000. The peer-to-peer filesharing software Napster launches. ATG Stores launches to sell decorative items for the home online. 2000: The dot-com bust. 2001: Alibaba.com achieved profitability in December 2001. 2002: eBay acquires PayPal for $1.5 billion.[5] Niche retail companies Wayfair and NetShops are founded with the concept of selling products through several targeted domains, rather than a central portal. 2003: Amazon.com posts first yearly profit. 2004: DHgate.com, China's first online b2b transaction platform, is established, forcing other b2b sites to move away from the "yellow pages" model.[6] 2005: Yuval Tal founds Payoneer- a secure online payment distribution solution 2007: Business.com acquired by R.H. Donnelley for $345 million.[7]

2009: Zappos.com acquired by Amazon.com for $928 million.[8] Retail Convergence, operator of private sale website RueLaLa.com, acquired by GSI Commerce for $180 million, plus up to $170 million in earn-out payments based on performance through 2012.[9] 2010: Groupon reportedly rejects a $6 billion offer from Google. Instead, the group buying websites plans to go ahead with an IPO in mid-2011.[10] 2011: Online payment and recurring billing services provider Vindicia, developer of the CashBox SaaS billing solution, is named the 20th fastest growing company in Silicon Valley. [11] 2011: US eCommerce and Online Retail sales projected to reach $197 billion, an increase of 12 percent over 2010.[12] Quidsi.com, parent company of Diapers.com, acquired by Amazon.com for $500 million in cash plus $45 million in debt and other obligations.[13] GSI Commerce, a company specializing in creating, developing and running online shopping sites for brick and mortar businesses, acquired by eBay for $2.4 billion.[14]

Distribution channels
E-commerce has grown in importance as companies have adopted Pure-Click and Brick and Click channel systems. We can distinguish between pure-click and brick and click channel system adopted by companies.

Pure-Click companies are those that have launched a website without any previous existence as a firm. It is imperative that such companies must set up and operate their ecommerce websites very carefully. Customer service is of paramount importance. Brick and Click companies are those existing companies that have added an online site for e-commerce. Initially, Brick and Click companies were skeptical whether or not to add an online e-commerce channel for fear that selling their products might produce channel conflict with their off-line retailers, agents, or their own stores. However, they eventually added internet to their distribution channel portfolio after seeing how much business their online competitors were generating.

Impact on markets and retailers

Economists have theorized that e-commerce ought to lead to intensified price competition, as it increases consumers' ability to gather information about products and prices. Research by four economists at the University of Chicago has found that the growth of online shopping has also affected industry structure in two areas that have seen significant growth in e-commerce, bookshops and travel agencies. Generally, larger firms have grown at the expense of smaller ones, as they are able to use economies of scale and offer lower prices. The lone exception to this pattern has been the very smallest category of bookseller, shops with between one and four employees, which appear to have withstood the trend.[22]

Global trends
Business models across the world also continue to change drastically with the advent of eCommerce and this change is not just restricted to USA. Other countries are also contributing to the growth of eCommerce. For example, the United Kingdom has the biggest e-commerce market in the world when measured by the amount spent per capita, even higher than the USA. The internet economy in UK is likely to grow by 10% between 2010 to 2015. This has led to changing dynamics for the advertising industry[18] Amongst emerging economies, China's eCommerce presence continues to expand. With 384 million internet users,China's online shopping sales rose to $36.6 billion in 2009 and one of the reasons behind the huge growth has been the improved trust level for shoppers. The Chinese retailers have been able to help consumers feel more comfortable shopping online.[19] eCommerce is also expanding across the Middle East. Having recorded the worlds fastest growth in internet usage between 2000 and 2009, the region is now home to more than 60 million internet users. Retail, travel and gaming are the regions top eCommerce segments, in spite of difficulties such as the lack of region-wide legal frameworks and logistical problems in

cross-border transportation.[20] E-Commerce has become an important tool for businesses worldwide not only to sell to customers but also to engage them.[21]