EBay discovers what Indians are likely to bid for online. Prakriti Prasad reviews some nuggets from its report
How do Indians make online purchases? How does consumer behaviour differ between cities and villages or between states? Every online marketer grapples with these questions. Some answers are in eBay India’s Census 2010, the country’s first report card on online shopping.
EBay is a leading online shopping site. It claims 2.5 million registered users in 2,471 different places across India. According to the survey, India has over 3,296 ecommerce “hubs”, as all the 28 states and seven union territories participate in ecommerce transactions. With over 2,000 categories of products at present, eBay claims to sell a product every minute on its site.
The census attempts to get a fix on the buying and selling behaviour of Indians as well as the demand of global buyers from India. It churns out interesting revelations. To begin with, it rates Delhi, Mumbai and Jaipur as the top three ecommerce hubs of the country, followed by Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. As expected, information technology hubs like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka are the most wired states with the largest number of cities that do ecommerce.
It’s not just urban India. The census clocks 1,054 rural locations from which online buying and selling took place last year. India’s top five rural hubs are in Kerala, Gujarat, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. This shows that rural India is familiar with the Internet, says eBay India’s head of strategy, Abhimanyu Lal. Lal also oversees the Global Easy Buy business for eBay that enables Indian shoppers to purchase from international eBay sites and pay in Indian rupees.
The products in demand in rural areas are different from those in demand in towns and cities. Desktops sell more than laptops, and dress materials sell instead of dresses. Jewellery is in high demand. India, says Lal, combines this unique group of markets comprising villages, towns and metros with distinct product preferences.
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Indians in all cities and demographics appear to have a taste for technology items, which make up 48 per cent of Indian transactions on eBay. But the hot favourite is jewellery, especially diamonds. A piece of jewellery sells every four minutes. By comparison, a mobile handset sells every five minutes, and a pen drive, apparel item or commemorative coin sells every six minutes.
A surprising range of products is on sale — mobile handsets with two SIM card slots, vintage car accessories, customised toys, temporary tattoos, cellulite treatment medicines, commemorative stamps, coins, ephemera and collectibles like Zippo lighters, World War I medals and fishing baits, to name just a few.
Each city has its own quirks. This year, the leading hub, Delhi, sold the most belly dancing apparel to global buyers, and bought vintage car accessories. Textile hub Mumbai sold the most sewing machines to fellow Indians and movie DVDs to the world; Mumbai bought old currency notes and music CDs from global eBayers.
Kolkatans sold ephemera (paper collectibles), like tram tickets of the 1930s and Zippo lighters, and showed their love of numismatics by buying the most Yugoslavian coins from international sellers. Kolkata was also the leading buyer of rudraksha and padparadscha sapphire in the country. Chennai sold the most temporary tattoos to international buyers and bought the highest number of DVR surveillance systems.
Another revelation is that small towns in India suddenly have global buyers making a beeline for their unique products. Ambala, for instance, says the report, sells cricket bats even to non-cricketing nations like France, Slovakia, Singapore and the USA. Meanwhile, the homoeopathic remedies of Silchar are becoming hot favourites with buyers in the USA and France. The Indian online world, seen through eBay’s figures, is truly a global marketplace.
Prakriti Prasad is a Kolkata-based freelance writer