Key highlights:
- Emerging Tier 3 cities such as Port Blair, Salur, Kakching, Nagaur, Kondapi, Panchkula, and Berhampur are the upcoming growth hot spots for online shopping.
- Lucknow and Jaipur emerged as the top rankers with higher percentage of online shoppers
- Indian shoppers prefer CoD (Cash on Delivery) instead of pre-payment, a phenomenon that’s back after COVID trends.
- 70% of items bought online are clothes, fashion accessories, skincare, and makeup products.
- Smaller locations are seeing high shopping buoyancy: Port Blair which is 1/220th in population to Delhi, is 1/20th of Delhi in terms of online shopping.
- Several towns are giving competition to major metros for select products: In Gurugram, Top wear is bought three times more as compared to other metros like Delhi, Kolkata, and Bengaluru.
Ecom Express, a technology-driven end-to-end logistics solutions company, in collaboration with ISB Institute of Data Science, has conducted a comprehensive research to gain valuable insights into consumer shopping habits and preferences, and demand from different parts of the country. The survey unveils online shopping patterns across geographies in India. The survey further highlights product categories and the payment trends that are prevalent across these markets.
Over 70% of items bought online are clothes, fashion accessories, skincare, and makeup products. This survey also highlighted trends in the volume of online shoppers across India. Metropolitan cities like Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai are the biggest shoppers, followed by larger cities like Lucknow, Jaipur, and Srinagar. Notably, growth hotspots in cities like Kolhapur, Jammu, Azamgarh, and others are bringing in the largest volume of online orders across the country when compared with their population. This trend suggests that due to the scarcity of physical retail outlets, online shopping is breaking barriers by delivering products across the nation.
The study further unveiled that Indians prefer to pay for their shopping once it reaches their doorstep as compared to prepaying for it at the time of ordering. Across India, Cash on Delivery (COD) / Pay on Delivery (POD) is four times more popular than Pre-Paid Delivery (PPD).
Ashish Sikka, Chief Strategy Officer, Ecom Express, said, “This report represents a powerful collaboration between Ecom Express and ISB Institute of Data Sciences for industry relevant research. Combining the strengths of comprehensive and extensive research capabilities, this partnership has yielded exceptional results. The insights derived in this first report provide insights relevant for growth hotspots in the country and influence decisions at the back of consumer shopping behaviours and preferences.”
Dipanjan Banerjee, Chief Business Officer, Ecom Express, said, “Through this report, we aim to present invaluable insights to equip our sellers with a profound understanding of the multifaceted world of Indian online consumers. This report signifies the strengths needed by online sellers and D2C brands to reach growing online consumers beyond typical metros as well as successful vectors such as CoD handling, data-sciences led consumer insights, and categories that are evolving across growing hotspots in the country to make impactful expansion plan by retailers and online sellers.”Avik Sarkar, Lead Researcher, ISB Institute of Data Science, said,“E-commerce is growing at an exponential rate, with a notable surge in demand from smaller cities in India. Combine this with the widespread penetration of the internet across our geography, and infuse this ecosystem with the convenience of digital payments, and the stage for unprecedented success in this sector is set.”
