The Online Saga

A little late in the Amazonifying stage, but I'm sure loving this transformation that Indian retail is going through.

The Online era has just started to get a boost in India, it seems. Although fabmart.com, India's first online store started operating in 1999, Indians were quite not ready for the transition then. They hadn't even been properly exposed to organised retailing yet.

Now finally we are caught into the great web of The World Wide Web (pun intended). Not that I'm complaining, I specifically love the advantages that it provides. Google being the best blessing, I wonder how our parents studied without Google's help!!

I would say God Bless Social media sites, they got us hooked on to the web and now we find virtual alternates to almost everything in the physical world : Shopping, Social gaming, Dating, Fixing Marriages, Counselling, Teaching etc etc. The market for e-commerce sites is getting bigger and bigger in India, at present it stands somewhere around  40k crore, a lucrative market for the foreign players as well, with Amazon having its Indian penetration plans working out on full swing.

Walmart, the biggest retailer and the biggest company of the world, remains one-step ahead with its @WalmartLabs trying to get Mobile, Social Media, and Retailing into one sphere with its excellent data mining capacity, a sheer delight.

Thus, the online platform has become important to one and all, the retailers as well as the customers. I sure do love the discounts and deals that I get when I shop online, and its way too convenient. However, being a student, the only problem that I face is when the item is not marked COD (Cash On Delivery), and this may be a problem for many Indians as well, as many of us do not hold credit or debit cards and we know the reason why, and even if we do we are a scared lot.

That's all for now.

Cheers!!