As the ecommerce majors squabble between each other and the government, social commerce is quietly spreading into India’s teeming mid-tier cities and towns
Those who think that ecommerce in India is now a high-stake two-horse race between Amazon and Flipkart may have missed a new player coming up fast from the shadows. A recent clutch of investments from some of India’s wiliest venture capital firms such as Sequoia, Accel, Matrix and Kalaari have shown that social commerce, a concept that meshes social media and ecommerce, is already changing the way people shop.“The idea for us to create the biggest ecommerce story in the country” – Sourjyendu Medda, cofounder DealShareIn May, a Google report, Year in Search: Insights for Brands Report, said over 70% of all smartphones-related searches come from small towns.“Finding something which gives you earnings in your spare time will be highly lucrative in our country” – Anup Jain, investor, Orios VP
If you live in one of India’s five metros, you may not even have heard of names like GlowRoad, Meesho, Shop101, BulBul, DealShare and Mall91. But these are names that are bywords for online shopping in India’s 50-plus mid-tier cities and almost 5000 towns. Not only have they become popular channels for shopping the latest clothes, electronics, accessories and household products, but also as an opportunity to earn money.!function(e,i,n,s){var t="InfogramEmbeds",d=e.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];if(window[t]&&window[t].initialized)window[t].process&&window[t].process();else if(!e.getElementById(n)){var o=e.createElement("script");o.async=1,o.id=n,o.src="https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js",d.parentNode.insertBefore(o,d)}}(document,0,"infogram-async");!function(e,i,n,s){var t="InfogramEmbeds",d=e.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];if(window[t]&&window[t].initialized)window[t].process&&window[t].process();else if(!e.getElementById(n)){var o=e.createElement("script");o.async=1,o.id=n,o.src="https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js",d.parentNode.insertBefore(o,d)}}(document,0,"infogram-async");