ONLINE RETAILING EXPANDING BY 65%

With increasing number of people preferring to shop online, the retail category penetration has increased to 65 per cent and has grown to 53.4 million visitors a month, an overall growth of 15 per cent annually, according to a report. Apparel, health, home furnishings, fragrances and cosmetics are the few categories which have shown growth in the last 12 years, with apparel being the strongest with 66 per cent followed by fragrances and cosmetics at 12 per cent growth, according to a report by Assocham and comScore, titled 'State of E-commerce in India'. "The growth has come across all retail categories and most of them show promising transactions and conversion rates along with growth in visitors," the report said. The report said that Flipkart group of websites (including recently acquired Myntra) are the most visited retail sites with over 26 million unique visitors for the month of July 2014 (excluding visitors using mobile internet and mobile apps). It was followed by Jabong (with 23.5 million unique visitors), Amazon (with 16.9 million unique visitors). It also found that the travel category has also been growing overall and the growth has come from all the sub-categories including car rentals, online travel agents, airlines as well as hotels and travel information sites. "Indian Railways is among the most visited sites in India with over 15 million unique visitors a month. MakeMy Trip, Yatra and Cleartrip individually reach over 8.9 per cent, 7.6 per cent and 3.5 per cent of total online users respectively," it said. According to the report, age group of 15-24 years has been the fastest growing age segment online with user growth being contributed by the both male and female segments. The top 5 popular categories accessed online are social networking, portal, search, entertainment and new sites, according to the report. "E-Commerce is increasingly emerging as the fundamental sales channel for growing number of businesses. The internet user base is expanding fast and e-Commerce has opened up a big window of opportunity for businesses to expand to new markets with ease and at low cost," Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat said. The report said that India has third fastest share in retail marketing adding over 7 million internet users among the BRIC nations. "India, Brazil and Russia are quite close to each other but China has been surging ahead in retail. The China continues on the growth path with over 103 retail million internet users by the end of June 2014. The Russian Federation has also surged ahead with a very high growth rate of 32 per cent," it said. It added close to 13 million users in the retail category. Brazil is also growing in double digits at 13 per cent and added 6 million unique visitors in the last year.