MOHAMMAD IMTIAZ
ASST. PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
SURYA COLLEGE OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
LUCKNOW imtiaz_iff@yahoo.co.in
ABSTRACT
There has been a rapid expansion if e-commerce (The sale of goods or services on the internet or other online system) since 1998 due primarily to the growth in availability and falling costs of technology. This has occurred both in the B2B (Business to business) and
B2C i.e. Business to Consumer) sectors.
B2C, also known variously on e-retailing, online retailing, Online shopping or etailing, really started to take off in 2002 when familiarity with the processes increased and security fears subsided. By the end of 2015 it is predicted that e-tailing will account for 18% of all Indian retail sales.
The growth of e-tailing initially seemed to a pose significant threat to traditional site based (
Bricks and Mortar) retailer; however experience is proving that, in fact many of the more successful online retailers and traditional retailers who have embraced the internet and added an online facility to their traditional storm stores to become multiple channel retailers.
Shopping via non- computer devices such as interactive digital television and mobile (mcommerce) is also predicted to make an increasing impact in the next few years.
KEYWORDS: E-
E-tailing began to work for some major corporations and smaller entrepreneurs as early as
1997 when Dell Computer reported multimillion dollar orders taken at its Web site. The success of Amazon.com hastened the arrival of Barnes and Noble's e-tail site. Concerns about secure order-taking receded. 1997 was also the year in which Auto-by-Tel reported that they had sold their millionth car over the Web, and CommerceNet/Nielsen Media reported that 10 million people had made purchases on the Web. E-retailing uses internet as a medium for customers to shop for the goods or services. It can be either pure-plays or bricks-and-clicks.
Pure-play uses internet as primary means of retailing while bricks-and-clicks uses the internet as an addition to the physical store. Now a day retailers have started offering almost everything under the sun on internet. From products like groceries to services like online gaming and jobs, e-retailing covers all frontiers.

Unfortunately, India has lagged in e-retail growth story due to low density of internet connections, lower penetration of credit cards and customer anxiety in using new technologies.
During the dotcom boom – Ecommerce was the sunrise industry, the one that would change the face of the world. While Ebay and Amazon – the twin pillars of Ecommerce in US did bring about paradigm shift in USA, the tech pundits in India are still a bit iffy about
Ecommerce in India.
Today the Internet might be viewed as a huge market potentially capable of covering the population of the whole world. This is why electronic commerce or E-Commerce is so attractive for many traditional businesses.
E-Commerce consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown dramatically since the large introduction of the Internet. A wide variety of commerce is conducted in this way, including things such as electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, e-marketing, online marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange, automated inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World
Wide Web in at least some point in the transaction\'s lifecycle.
E-commerce, which primarily refers to buying, selling, marketing and servicing of products or services over internet is classified into B2B (Business to Business), B2C (Business to
Consumer) and C2C (Consumer to Consumer) and C2B(Consumer to Business). Four distinct categories of electronic commerce can be identified as follows:
Business-to-business (B2B):
B2B transactions are largely between industrial manufacturers, partners, and retailers or between companies. Business-to-Business refers to the full spectrum of e-commerce that can occur between two organizations. Among other activities, B2B ecommerce includes purchasing and procurement, supplier management, inventory management, channel management, sales activities, payment management, and service and support. According to
Outlook Business magazine (May 20, 2008), the total B2B transactions in India in the year
2008 are likely to be US$100 billion and B2B marketplaces could account for $15 to $20 billion out of that. India’s largest B2B portal Tradeindia, maintained by Infocom Network
Ltd, also stated that e-commerce transactions in India show a growth rate of 30 percent to 40 percent and will soon reach the $100 billion mark. In near future, e-commerce is going to play a major role in multimedia, entertainment and fashion industry. The foreign branded companies are eager to take full advantage of the growing Indian market and are trying to create market for their products over the net. Gucci Co. an Italian iconic fashion and leather goods label is eager to make its hold in India with Business to business transactions. Some of the key B2B exchanges in India are tradeindia.com, matexnet.com, Alibaba.com,
(
AuctionIndia.com, Indiamart.com, TeaAuction.com, MetalJunction.com, Chemdex www.chemdex.com
),
( www.freemarkets.com)etc .
Fastparts (www.fastparts.com), and FreeMarkets

Business-to-Consumer (B2C):
B2C transactions take place directly between business establishments and consumers.
Although business-to-business transactions play an important part in e-commerce market, a share of e-commerce revenues in developing countries like India is generated from business to consumer transactions. Business-to-Consumer e-commerce refers to exchanges between businesses and consumers, e.g., Amazon.com, Yahoo.com and Schwab.com. Similar transactions that occur in business-to business e-commerce also take place in the business-toconsumer context. For instance, as with smaller business-to-business, transactions that relate to the “back office” of the customer (i.e., inventory management at the home) are often not tracked electronically. However, all customer-facing, or “front office” activities are typically tracked. These include sales activities, consumer search, frequently asked questions and service and support. Railway and Airlines have played a vital role in e-commerce transactions in India. Travel portals are exploding in India. Recently, Make My Trip.com has shown Rs
1000 crores of turnover. Travel alone constituted 50% of Rs 4800 crore online market in
2007-08. In India, online services like ticketing, banking, tax payment, bill payment, hotel room booking, entertainment, online games, matrimonial sites, job sites, etc. are showing signs of development in business-to-customer transactions. There has been tremendous boost in the online business with the stock exchange coming online. Online valentine gifts and
Diwali gifts are also becoming popular along with the birthday cakes. No doubt, the total value of the B2B transactions is much larger than that of the B2C transactions, because typically B2B transactions are of much greater value than B2C transactions. It seems that the
B2C market in India will take time to grow as compared to the B2B market.
Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C):
C2C sites don't form a very high portion of web-based commerce. Most visible examples are the auction sites. Basically, if some one has something to sell, then he gets it listed at an auction sites and others can bid for it. Consumer-to-Consumer exchanges involve transactions between and among consumers. These exchanges may or may not include third-party involvement as in the case of the auction-exchange eBay. Other activities include: classified

ads(e.g., www.numberoneclassifieds.com), games (www.heat.net), jobs (www.monster.com),
Web-based communication (www.icq.com), and personal services (e.g., Yahoo! Personals, webpersonals.com).
Consumer-to-Business (C2B):
Consumers can band together to form and present themselves as a buyer group to businesses in a consumer-to-business relationship. These groups may be economically motivated as with the demand aggregator, Mercata.com, or socially oriented as with cause-related advocacy at voxcap.com.
There are a number of research works have been done by researchers but only a few has been given, related to the paper.
Brown (1987) has suggested that the costs of a retail format refer to consumers‟ costs.
Consumers incur non-monetary costs - time, effort and psychological costs - as well as monetary costs. Savings in non-monetary costs are especially emphasized by non-store formats. Their appeal to consumers has been the ease and convenience of shopping, freed from location and other constraints.
According to Rao (1999), E-commerce offers increased market activity for retailers in the form of growing market access and information and decreased operating and procurement costs. The consumers can gain better prices due to the competition and also can enrich their knowledge on goods and services.
Zhang and von Dran (2000) have found that certain aesthetic elements of a web-site are considered as purchase motivators, while other aesthetic elements serve as hygienic factors
(i.e., necessities) in purchase decisions from e-retailers. The colour and background images of web-page are also found to affect consumer choice.
Tractinsky and Rao (2001) have argued that computer users, particularly those who seek online substitutes to the physical shopping experience, would value aesthetic designs just like consumers of other commodities.
Ratchford et al. (2001) have told that through Internet, consumers can gather information about merchandise and they compare a product across suppliers at a low cost. They also can effectively analyze the offerings and easily locate a low price for a specified product.
Eroglu et al. (2001) have advocated that the most important thing in the traditional retailing is physical store setting. According to them, it is largely determined by the cost of real estate and the various physical objects required creating different sounds, aromas, colours and lighting.Online constraints tend to be related to the screen resolution and the hardware that exists at the consumer end of the channel. The hedonic factors in designing the web-site interface can be enhanced with symbolic, nonverbal elements, which can be created by images, colours, fonts and videos and music.
Zeithaml (2002) has defined that the success of e-tailing depends on the efficient web site design, effective shopping and prompt delivery. The other e-store services are delivery on

real time , return and replacement process, period of filling out online orders form, speed of response time to e-customers‟ queries.
Kim and Lee (2002) have suggested that the design of e-store influences consumers‟ access to e-store. In the e-store, website design, design of product and service comparison and information, time to complete online order form, easy of searching product and service, screen layout, screen complexity, page composition, information retrieval methods, information display, use of colour and background, assistance to the user and speed of accessing the e-store are notable factors attracting e-customers.
Doolin (2004) has specifically pointed out that e-tailing is the sale of products and services to individual customers. According to him, the definition of e-tailing encompasses the sales of products or services online.
Rabinovich (2004) and Cao and Zhao (2004) have identified the challenges of e-tailing industry. This challenge begins with the response time of the web-server; moves to the amount of time the customer must wait until the order ships, and also includes the time the shipping process takes.
Delone and Reif (2004) have found that at present customers are more likely to continue shopping online when they have a greater experience of online shopping. It is also found that young adults have a more positive attitude towards online buying.
Lavie and Tractinsky (2004) have expressed the expressive aesthetics of web-sites that convey a sense of creativity and uniqueness. This type of aesthetics is likely to serve an important role when shopping for specialty goods. The expressive design is relevant to specialty goods because of their unique characteristics that emphasised the shopping experience.
Bauer et al., (2006) have compared the services of online retail service vs. traditional retail services. They have identified that the online retail services are broken into two rather distinct phases: the client interaction phase taking place online and the fulfilment phase taking place offline. They also have suggested that web-site quality is a matter of delivering both hedonic and utilitarian elements.
Since mid 1990’s traditional traders followed large Computer Manufacturers into the new sphere and today you can buy practically anything through the Internet: from a bunch of flowers to a car. The only exception seems to be a trip to Mars. Today E-Commerce market is huge and still growing.
The E-commerce market is totally democratic. This is perfect capitalism: if you sell ‘ you win, if you don’t sell ’ you loose. It’s all about marketing and economic rules of demand and supply. Certain products or services appear more suitable for online sales; others remain more suitable for traditional sales. Many successful purely virtual companies deal with digital products, music, movies, education, communication, software, photography, and financial transactions. Examples of this type of company include Amazon.com, Google, E-Bay and
Paypal. Products less suitable for E-Commerce include products that have a low value-toweight ratio, products that have a smell, taste, or touch component, products that need trial fittings ’ most notably clothing ’ and products where color integrity appears important.
Nonetheless, clothing sold through the internet is big business in the U.S.

According to e Marketer’s annual report in 2006 the E-Commerce market size in Europe has grown to 106 billion ($133 billion). Analysts say that it is very likely to go on increasing and display a very fast rate of annual growth’ up to 25%. The situation will be stable for at least five years and the market will reach the point of ’323 billion ($407 billion) by 2012.
Britain, France and Germany prevail in the European E-Commerce market. These countries have the largest share in the total figures transactions’ up to 72%. British E-Commerce market ranks first and analysts believe it will reach $114 billion in 2012, which is 41% higher than the figures of 2006. Germany holds the second place. However, it is first in the number of online-customers’ there are as many as 3 million.
Some researchers also note that in the next five years the European market might increase significantly due to the E-Commerce growth in the countries like Italy, Holland and Spain.
A wide range of goods and services can be sold through the Internet. A large piece in this pie is held by Information Technology. However, the share of other niches (for instance, traveling and finance) is unexpectedly high. Real estate, computers, hardware and software, tourism, and financial services comprise the top of the list
The Ecommerce market is expected to touch 323 billion ($407 billion) by 2013, E Tailing or
E RE-tailing market is only about 1150 Crore INR according to a survey conducted by
Internet and Mobile Association of India and Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB).
The top E-tailers in India are indiatimes.com, fabmart.com, rediffshopping.com. They have managed to retain their lead due to innovative business strategies, supply chain model and changing urban lifestyles
ADVANTAGE OF E- RETAILING
Business Hours: 24/7
Online store opens 24/7. Even while you’re sleeping, your customers can visit your store and browse your products and place their orders
Global Location
Your store is located… well, online. It means everyone with internet connection, from a countryside in England to a big city in China to the jungle of Kalimantan, can visit your store without you having retailers on those places. You, on other hand, can manage your store almost anywhere you want. Even on the go!
Lower Transaction Costs
With a well-implemented online store you can automate many things. By automatization you can cut the costs on areas like documents preparation, error detection and correction, mail

order catalogs, phone calls and labour costs. If your products or services are downloadable, you’ll have distribution costs completely cut off.
Easy Shelves Arrangement
If you have, say, more than 1,000 products on your store, would it be nice if you could arrange the “shelves” within minutes? Well, with online store it’s really easy. You can also highlight feature products with few clicks. Doing so might increase the conversion rate.
Convenient Shopping
From your customers’ perspectives, shopping online would be really cool because:

 They don’t need to physically be on the store; they can browse through your products in pyjamas, laying lazily on bed


They save more time and gas
 They can browse through many products within minutes
They can compare prices easily


They can choose preferred payment gateway your online store offers
 They can provide their important information (i.e. credit card number) more securely
They can do all those stuff above on the go
 For certain products they can have better deals
Larger Purchases per Transaction
Amazon has it, other great online stores have it, and your online store should have it, too. It’s called cross sales. With cross sales feature enabled, when a buyer views a product, he’ll see what other people who ordered the product also purchased. That way he can see related products bought by other people. If he likes those products, he’ll buy them, too. And you’ll have your sweetest smile, won’t you?
Improved Customer Interactions
Visitors are good, repeat visitors are better, but repeat visitors who actually buy from the store are the ones you really want. So you need to plan and implement the best marketing strategies for your online store.
Transactions Recording
A good business means a good transactions recording. And with online store you can automate it. No need to hire an employee for the job, every online activities your customers engage in your store will be recorded. You can also view the records to analyze the growth of your store.
Disadvantages of E-Retailing
Shipping Takes Time
If you sell physical goods, shipping it halfway round the world might take several days, weeks or even more. It means you cannot send certain products as fresh food or dairy products. Who on earth would love to have stale bread delivered to his door?
Shipping Costs More
The basic shipping cost rule is simple: the more the weight, the more the cost. If you sell a couch to someone on another continent, the shipping cost would be ridiculous.
Inability to Feel the Physical
Online store doesn’t provide the opportunity to actually touch, wear or sit on the product.
Therefore selling such products as apparel and furniture onli clicks stores offer the ability to buy online but pick up in a nearby store. Many stores give the consumer the delivery company's tracking number for their package when shipped, so they can check its status online and know exactly when it will arrive. For efficiency reasons, online stores generally do not ship products immediately upon receiving an order. Orders are only filled during warehouse operating hours, and there may be a delay of anywhere from a few minutes to a

few days to a few weeks before in-stock items are actually packaged and shipped. Many retailers inform customers how long they can expect to wait before receiving a package, and whether or not they generally have a fulfillment backlog.
Currently e-retailers in India are focusing on producing sustainable and profitable business strategies for their Internet-based operations. Established retailers in India are using physical channels as well as the Internet to market their products. According to Dennis et al. (2004), online shoppers prefer shopping at web sites operated by established high-street retailers.
Levy and Weitz (1995) have stated that generally retailers survive and prosper by satisfying customer needs more effectively than their competitors, addressing customer needs through effective. E-tailing in India has rapidly emerged, emulating non-store-based operations and demonstrate how the Internet can potentially completely redefine customer needs using the
Internet and the web to create a virtual retail environment with extensive global coverage. For designing an effective e-tailing strategy in India, it is therefore needed to understand the needs of individual customers. Successful e-tailing are concerned with high velocity, flexible systems and procedures, extremely high service levels, and full electronic connections to the trading community (Forger, 2000). In order to develop the right e-tailing strategy, Feare
(2002) has addressed five points. They are: (i) prompt delivery, (ii) supply chain, (iii) demand nature, (iv) reverse logistics, and (v) accuracy.
(I) PROMPT DELIVERY- The first major challenge faced by e- The first major challenge faced by e-retailers was high expectations for prompt delivery of Web orders by customers (Krueger, 2000) .One of several delivery options such as, express (next day), priority (three to four days) and regular (five to ten days) may be selected and paid for by the customer while ordering the product.
(II) SUPPLY CHAIN - Ensuring supply of required amount of raw materials and products at the right time for the right price as well as proper slotting and picking methods are very much important for effective operating of e-tailing. E-retailers must have reliable supply-chain partners with the support of a back end supply-chain management systems. Proper slotting and picking methods based on the size, weight and demand nature must be devised to receive, slot, pick and pack properly. A warehouse management system should be a part of the supply chain management system to oversee the activities like order sorting, packing, and final bar coding for shipment.
(III) DEMAND NATURE- Successful e-retailing companies will have to assess the supply and demand condition so that they can meet unpredictable demand. A newsworthy event can create a huge demand for a product within a short time. According to Hein (2000), seasonality factor also contributes to the unpredictability of the demand nature. Popular items and may need to be assessed on its future demand to avoid processing delays. Proper use of seasonality factors in forecasting models may contribute to better demand forecasting for highly unpredictable items.
(IV) REVERSE LOGISTICS- In any retail business, some products are returned from the point of consumption. Therefore, the challenge is setting up infrastructure and procedures for reverse logistics. The process is not only inevitable but also gaining importance as a viable, sustainable and profitable business strategy (Dowlatshahi,
2000). Procedures need to be established for returning orders. Drop-off points must also be set up. A customer wanting to return merchandise should be encouraged to

have authorization to do so through the Web site. The e-tailors need to have an understandable product return policy on the Web. A copy of the same policy may also be included in the shipped package. A customer must identify the reason for returning the item. Based on the reason, one of several actions such as, restock, recycle, remanufacture, send back to the supplier may be taken. A flexible sorting or packaging line in the warehouse may be used to handle returned items when needed.
(V) ACCURACY- To achieve high levels of accuracy in e-tailing business, the firm must consider the right equipment to increase accuracy. This will augment the nature of its operations, and the level of adjustment that managers are willing to make to minimize human errors. But if companies gather and analyze warehouse performance statistics regularly, invest in automated data collection and verification systems and equipment to the extent possible, create efficient picking procedures, and train all employees thoroughly, then they can improve their accuracy level and streamline the customer fulfillment process (Huduck, 1998). Order fulfillment rate, accuracy of order fulfillment and cost per order fulfillment are among important indicators need to be evaluated routinely.
Flipkart.com
: (www.flipkart.com/)
Started in the year 2007, Flipkart is one of the leading online shopping sites in India. One can buy products of various categories such as music, games, cameras, computers, healthcare and personal products through this site. It has over 3 million registered users and sell more than
30,000 products in a day to its customers. The various add-on services offered by the site such as free shipping, cash-on-delivery, EMI and 30 day replacement policy make it a favourite shopping destination among people.
*figures in $million Source: Industry
ONLINE RETAIL’S BIG GUNS
Name of Amount
Company Raised*
Date
Private Equity Current
Partner Valuation*
Flipkart 20.00
Snapdeal
12
40
Fashion and You
Naaptol
8
40
7
25
Jun ‘11
Tiger Global 1,000.00
Jan
Jul ‘11
‘11
Nexus Venture
Partner 100
Bessemer
Dec
Nov ‘11
Sequoia Capita
‘10
Norwest Venture partners, Intel
200
Capital
Aug
Oct ‘11
‘11
Cannan Partners
New Enterprise Not
Associates known

SnapDeal
SnapDeal is the leader in the hottest category of ecommerce models: group buying. Founded by Jasper Infotech in 2010, a coupon player, SnapDeal sells everything from dining to beauty packages, health services to lifestyle products, holiday packages to movie tickets.
SnapDeal attracts 500,000 visitors everyday, and more than 600,000 subscribers to its daily deal newsletters. On the ground too, it has tie-ups with 50,000 merchants across 30 cities in
India, and has also extended services to 5 overseas locations.
Set up in February 2010 the site has already attracted a round of angel and a round of institutional funding from NEA IndoUS Ventures.
Fashionandyou.com
Fashionandyou.com is already transforming the online business space with innovative consumer driven approach, providing great bargains on the most sought after fashion and luxury brands of the world.
Just 11 months old, the site has secured funding of $8 million from Sequoia Capital. The site has 8 lakh members and gets about 3 lakh visitors and 2,500 orders every day.
It is also a member of Brand Alliance, formed by major private sales companies in Brazil,
India, Russia and Switzerland.
Taggle
In the e-commerce space, dotted by young entrepreneurs, Taggle stands out in terms of management depth. Its co-founders have all come with decades of experience.
The company started in June 2010, has already got funding of $8.75 mn from Battery
Ventures and Greylock Partners - one of the highest in the e-commerce space in India.
Timtara.com
Launched in April 2010 by Arindam Bose, Timtara.com is an online retail venture of
InfoSecure Consulting that wants to change the shape of Internet retail.
It offers products across 15 different categories such as mobiles and accessories, consumer durables, home appliances, apparel, health and hygiene, entertainment, telebrands, and more.
Yebhi.com
Yebhi.com, started in 2009 as bigshoebazaar.com, sells shoes online and has taken a bottomup approach in growing inventory.
Promoted by Kanpur-based shoe trader, Danish Ahmed, who hails from a shoe manufacturing family, Yebhi is one of the top Indian online retail sites by users and traffic.
Knowing that size is often a big issue with shoes, it encourages its users to buy 2 sizes and return one.

20north.com
20north.com, launched in 2008, gets products from the US for Indian buyers with a guaranteed delivery to over 500 cities and towns in India.
Founded in 2008 with the vision of allowing Indian consumers to buy anything in the world from anywhere in India, 20North.com is one of India's leading online retailers.
Electronics and gadgets, sporting goods, home accessories, movies, books, shoes, apparel and thousands of other products are on offer.
99labels.com
99labels.com, is a members-only sales site for luxury fashion brands launched in 2010.
99labels offers fashion-wear, accessories, jewellery, lifestyle products and furniture.
99labels offers exclusivity and an extensive brand choice at cheaper rates.
Bindaasbargain
Targeted at the impulse buyers, Bindaasbargain follows 'One Deal A Day Concept' under which products are sold to retail consumers at wholesale prices and usually allows each user to buy 3 of each item.
An online store that operates within a brisk time frame, Bindaas Bargain offers a new deal every day. The products include gadgets, home theatres, luxury watches, smash games at cheap prices delivered to your doorstep.

Buytheprice.com
Set up in December 2009 electronic appliances website, Buytheprice.com, is based on the model that the more demand you create, the lesser you pay for the product.
Caratlane.com
Launched in 2008 online retailer of diamonds, Caratlane.com, combines the advantages of an offline and an online site - the trust enjoyed by a three-city brick and mortar diamond store that offers 5-15 per cent lower prices online.
Dealsandyou.com
A group buying portal, Dealsandyou.com, provides discounts on services and products. Set up by Harish Bahl and Group Buying Global AG in June 2010, the site has an outreach of over 1.5 million members.
The site has secured 'Series A' funding from Group Buying Global AG.
Fashionandyou.com
Fashionandyou.com is already transforming the online business space with innovative consumer driven approach, providing great bargains on the most sought after fashion and luxury brands of the world.
Just 11 months old, the site has secured funding of $8 million from Sequoia Capital. The site has 8 lakh members and gets about 3 lakh visitors and 2,500 orders every day.
It is also a member of Brand Alliance, formed by major private sales companies in Brazil,
India, Russia and Switzerland.
Flipkart.com is among the top 3 in each of the research parameters: business model, user experience, and traction.
Launched by IIT-ians Sachin and Binny Bansal, Flipkart.com sells books at low prices with free shipping, and has over 6 million titles listed across all categories.
Indiangiftsportal.com
Headquartered in Lucknow, Indiangiftsportal.com delivers gifts across the world. The portal has a wide range of Indian handicrafts which are procured from regional manufacturers.
Infibeam.com
Ahmedabad-based Infibeam.com was launched in 2007 as a B2C online shopping portal for books, and has now expanded into handsets, consumer electronics, used cars and bike classifieds, etc.
In terms of business, it is among the top e-commerce sites in India and competes with the likes of eBay, Indiatimes Shopping, Rediff Shopping and Homeshop18.
Inkfruit.com
Launched by IIT Bombay alumni Kashyap Dalal and Navneet Rai as a customized t-shirt selling site, Inkfruit.com challenges its users with design contests from time-to-time. It is involved in buying and co-creation.

Besides t-shirts, buyers can also try other products like mugs, posters, and calendars. While the company raised a round of angel investment, it has to raise further funds to create marketing impact.
Magazinemall.in
Magazinemall.in entered the Dataquest list primarily because of its user experience score.
It provides online subscription of magazines at one place. Within a year of its inception it has entered into agreements with more than 37 publishing groups covering more than 200 publication titles across various categories.
Myntra.com
The customised gifts and merchandise site myntra.com, is a brainwave of 6 IIT-IIM graduates.
In 2009 Myntra stepped into the real e-commerce and retail arena for creating or buying customized and personalised merchandise such as t-shirts, mugs, calendars, watches, and notepads.
Myntra offers the option to pay cash on delivery of products, which is a bit hit. Myntra has raised 3 rounds of funding. And has over 4 lakh Facebook fans and serves over 1,000 orders per day.
Naaptol.com
Established in January 2008, Naaptol.com boasts to be the first comparison based social shopping portal in India which sells consumer electronic goods, laptops, mobiles, cameras,
LCD TVs, and home appliances.
The website lets users find the latest deals and the lowest prices available in the market.
The site has over 50,000 offers listed across a wide range of categories and hopes to clock Rs
140 crore (Rs 1.4 billion) revenue this year.
Perfume2order lets the consumer buy choicest perfume brands, sitting in the comfort of one's home in Jaisalmer or Guntur.
Promoted by entrepreneur and NRI, Pramod Raghav, perfume2order offers competitive choice of about 125 designer perfumes and 450 brands spanning over 3,500 fragrances.
Playgroundonline.com
Playgroundonline.com, a sports equipment and apparels site, is popular for FIFA and IPL merchandise.
Founded in 2008 customers can search any particular product by category, so it has focused on refining the search experience of the users.

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES: Usage of social networking sites like twitter, facebook, orkut to promote and advertise products.
E-MAIL MARKETING : The low cost is not the only reason to send e mail, however. Most consumers still consider email to be their primary form of communication, even though there are several alternatives ways to subscribe to periodic content from small businesses.
Internet is a huge opportunity and there is hardly anyone oblivious to the fact. The internet economy of the G-20 will nearly double between 2010 and 2016. The Boston Consulting
Group recently came up with some interesting numbers as it always does. Among the G-20 players, United States benefits from a vibrant internet economy while German and France tend to lag. By 2016, UK will be the front runner and many other countries will catch up, the report projects.
Now, retail represents close to 33% of the total GDP in G-20 and the online retail contributes a significant and increasing share in many countries. The effect is most significantly seen in the U.K. where deep internet penetration and an efficient delivery infrastructure has made the online story a grand success. But the EU as a whole holds back when it comes to cross-border eCommerce. According to projections, online retail will account for 23% of UK’s total retail while India will be at 4.5%.

Average for Developed Countries: 8.5%
Average for Developing Countries: 3.2%
CONCLUSION:
Now a days fashion of e-retailing is increasing day by day, youth are the movers who want to try this facilities and in metro cities online buying is increasing very rapidly. Now they use online banking facility, book their movie ticket, railway ticket, recharge their mobile online.
But in two tier cities online facilities are not popular. They still buy railway ticket, movie ticket with the help of broker or personally standing in a queue. One reason is that they do not believe on these facilities due to some cases of leak of personal data and second one is penetration of internet user is very low in two tier cities.
Consumer’s preferences are changing rapidity and becoming highly diversified. It is difficult for the retail stores to satisfy all the needs of the customers. The most of the consumer’s want to get some attractive prices, good schemes and offers on every purchases and a shopping comfort as well. Those who are able to purchase their needs and want for a month in a bulk prefers to go to the retail chains. With the help of online shopping facility retailer can fulfill the need and demand of their customers and able to provide better services to their customers.
In India online shopping is still not a preferred way of shopping because customers are facing some problem regarding fraud, privacy, hidden charges, on time delivery etc. Indians are not so much techno savvy that help those who are ready to cheat with the customers. Companies should need to promote or try to tell their customers about online shopping facility so that those who are aware about this they will use it at least once and those who don’t know they will think about using it. Companies need to find out that what type of problem customer are facing while using online shopping facility and try to salve there problem so that customer will find it easy in comparison to other way of shopping.
It is almost certain that the next blue ocean in India is going to be ecommerce. There are some of facts that exactly give us the holistic picture of ecommerce Industry. Indian retail market will be worth 900 bn USD by 2014 and out of which online contribution is just
0.47%, while the global Industry average is 4%. Our neighbour country China is very close to the Industry average. Number of people below the age of 35 is going to be closed to 828 Mn by 2015. This can be very interesting figure for all e-commerce companies in India. Adoption

of new technology is also an important factor for fuelling the growth of e-commerce Industry.
Current trend shows that India will have 450 Mn smartphone users and close to 100 Mn 3G users by 2015. Most Important – The Internet - Close to 376 Mn unique internet users by
2015 and Current users: 120 Mn but we are still struggling with Infrastructure and bandwidth
(High speed Internet). With broadband internet access still accessible to entire population, this industry may see an explosive growth. Most growth drivers are in India’s favor – demographics, economy, changing lifestyle, exposure to new ideas. It is just a question of creating a sustainable eco system for E-tailing, which is at an inflection point. Time to fasten the seat belts!
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