You'll never guess where e-commerce is booming in India. Hint: Not metros

New Delhi: India’s North East is quietly becoming one of the fastest-growing markets for online
retailers with an increasing number of youngsters from the region logging on to buy mobiles, accessories and much more.

Portals such as Myntra, Jabong and Snapdeal are finding good traction for orders from the region as the number of customers looking to buy the best brands at affordable prices is on the rise.

“Youngsters today are extremely fashion conscious and tech savvy and online shopping gives them a platform to access the best brands at affordable prices with the convenience of shopping from anywhere. North Eastern markets behave similarly,” Myntra co-founder Ashutosh Lawania said.

[caption id=“attachment_77437” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image: Thinkstock[/caption]

“From a geographic reach and availability perspective, perhaps more so - we are seeing a steady increase in business from this region,” he added.

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The North Eastern states – Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura – generate about 8 percent of traffic and business for Myntra and the company expects further growth in the coming quarters, Lawania said, without disclosing absolute numbers.

“North East is doing really well in terms of acceptance (of online retail) and the market potential is also very big. The taste for fashion is very refined there and customers are trendy, experimental and are ready to try out fresh arrivals,” Jabong co-founder Praveen Sinha said.

Snapdeal Vice-President Operations Saurabh Goyal said the percentage of contribution from the region to the New Delhi-based company’s overall business is in double digits.

“The region is one of the fastest-growing markets in the country for us. We are growing in double digits month on month,” he added.

Even eyewear online shopping portal Lenskart has seen good traction for its products from the region. “About 20 percent of our overall business comes from the North East plus West Bengal. Fashionable eyecare products are much in demand,” Lenskart CEO Piyush Bansal said.

For Myntra, Guwahati, the most populous city in the region, and Aizawl in Mizoram are the two key markets, while there has been a steady increase in the number of online shoppers from Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Sibsagar and Tinsukia – all in Assam – in the past few months, Lawania added.

Lawania said men in the North East region shop for smart casuals and footwear while women opt for western and ethnic wear online.

“Brands like Puma, Nike, Adidas, CAT, Wildcraft, Duke, Lee, Levis, Clarks, Shree and Myntra.com’s in-house brands Roadster, DressBerry and Anouk are preferred by shoppers in these region,” he said.

Jabong saw women’s apparel and men’s footwear topping its demand chart from the North East.

Electronic items such as mobile phones and cameras are the biggest draws for Snapdeal from the region, with robust demand for fashion and lifestyle items. Flipkart, one of India’s biggest online retailers, said it doesn’t share region-specific traffic and sales data.

“We see about 50 percent of our traffic coming from non-metros, tier I and II cities…In terms of trends, we see an increasing number of customers visiting us through the mobile platform in these cities,” a Flipkart spokesman said.

Flipkart generally gets demand for books, mobiles, computers and accessories and footwear from non-metros. Although customers find the online space good for value-for-money purchases, the time taken for deliveries to the North East remains a challenge.

“It takes quite a number of days for the order to arrive, unlike what I had experienced in Bangalore,” said Nana Ningthemcha, who worked as a cabin crew member in a private airline and has shifted base to Imphal in Manipur.

Admitting that delivering on time is a challenge, Sinha of Gurgaon-based Jabong said: “Our biggest hindrance in the region is logistics. Since delays can hamper our customer relationship, we are developing models to overcome these issues.”

Also, the cost of delivery can be high if consignments are dispatched from cities such as Delhi, he added. Echoing similar sentiments, Lawania of Myntra said: “While there are still certain infrastructure-related challenges, we have overcome those with the help of dedicated distribution hubs at Guwahati and Aizwal.”

Myntra, headquartered in Bangalore, offers services to over 60 locations using third-party couriers.

Some challenges faced by online retailers while delivering orders are unique to the region.

“Natural events like landslides or manmade ones like economic blockades, they at times can disrupt our customer experiences but otherwise we have set the right customer expectation by not over-promising,” Snapdeal’s Goyal said.

Keeping in view the distance, he said an order from a city like Guwahati can take four to six days to be delivered compared with a day or two for Bangalore.

Despite the challenges, online retailers are unanimous that their business in the North East India will only grow, given the rising trend in orders from the region.

PTI