E-commerce in India

India has an Internet user base of about 690.0 million as of November 2023, about 40% of the population. Despite being the second-largest user base in world, only behind China (1.079 billion, 48% of population), the penetration of e-commerce is low compared to markets like the United States (266 million, 84%), or France (54M, 81%), but is growing, adding around 6 million new entrants every month. The industry consensus is that growth is at an inflection point. In India, cash on delivery is the most preferred payment method, accumulating 75% of the e-retail activities. Demand for international consumer products (including long-tail items) is growing faster than in-country supply from authorised distributors and e-commerce offerings. Long tail business strategy allows companies to realize significant profits by selling low volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The term was first coined in 2004 by Chris Anderson. In 2023, the largest e-commerce companies in India were Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon. In 2018, Amazon beat Flipkart and was recorded the biggest ecommerce in India in terms of revenue. In 2020, Flipkart heavily outsold Amazon by almost two to one by sales during festive retail season. In 2022, the pilot phase of the Open Network for Digital Commerce was launched.