According to the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), travel was indeed the initial industry to help catapult digital sales in India. It is currently the largest segment of B2C commerce sales and totals $345.44 billion INR in 2012. This means that online travel sales accounted for almost 75% of all the B2C commerce sales.
Although travel remains to be dominant, different types of ecommerce is beginning to catch on. This may result in a slight drop for travel's shares as the IAMAI predicts a 4% drop by December of 2013.
Online retail sales are called "etailing" and are expected to grow almost more than 50% in the upcoming year. This drastic growth will result in more than $100 billion INR by the end of the year.
Sources have stated that bus, rail, and air transit tickets were 97% of all the online travel sales in 2012. Only a small percentage (2%) of these sales will come from lodging accommodations and this means that there is still a lot of room for growth in the online hotel bookings niche.
This news comes at the right time as businesses are excited to see the projected growth only increase. The forecast for 2013 is just as positive as most businesses are anticipating digital sales to rise by almost 29.1% by this year.
The IAMAI also expects growth of more than 26.7% by this year and so all of this comes as a big surprise to the country as they are shocked that digital sales are doing so well. The future of India's ecommerce will not solely rely on travel as digital sales will only continue to grow in the eyes of consumers from around the world. This is great news for companies from all over the country and the economy can only get better from here. India is certainly on the rise when it comes to digital economy.
