How e-commerce in India creates new opportunities for entrepreneurs in 2020
E-commerce, also known as electronic commerce in its extended form, is a business
model which is a process of buying of goods from retailers and selling it to the consumers, and
also the financial transactions conducted electronically on the internet. For example,
Flipkart.com is one of the most popular online stores in the e-commerce industry.
E- commerce provides many advantages to emerging entrepreneurs (Bermudez et al.
2012). They can ship products with logistics support, maintain financial transaction online, can
open the store for 24*7, global coverage of the customers and less infrastructure cost for
establishing a business.
Here ,some examples are listed below showing how e-commerce creates new
opportunities for entrepreneurs:(Understanding eCommerce, 2019; Wu et al., 2011)
1. By reducing the cost of infrastructure needed for starting a business
As we all know, the traditional way of starting a business is quite costly and risky for a
new entrepreneur as it needs huge investment in establishing the required infrastructure. In
contrast to this, the online store does not need any support in terms of infrastructure to start a
business and hence any kind of risk does not exist.

Saving on rent
There is no need to have a high charging rented space to start a business because all kind
of commercial transaction is conducted through the internet. So, the entrepreneurs does not
have to arrange extra money to rent a space.

Decrease in number of staff
Big physical setups are not present with e-commerce business, so there is no need of
more work staff, which is a favourable condition for the entrepreneurs.
2. Global coverage of the customers

The business is always started in a regional locality, and therefore it has limited
customers belonging to that area only, but e- commerce provides a medium to
reach out and can buy and sell vice versa, the products internationally. For
example, let an entrepreneur started a business of Banarsi sarees in a small
locality of Banaras. The local area customers can only purchase that Sarees from
the shop and therefore profit will be very nominal and restricted to the locality.
Through e-commerse, the suppliers get the opportunity to register themselves
with e-commerce websites through a contract. Thus, the publicity of their
products such as Saree in this case becomes straightaway available to entire list of
customers associated with the ecommerce website. It is thus, e-commerce is
helping not only sellers but also customers particularly remotely located from
cities which don’t have direct access to the products.(Brzozowska & Bubel, 2015)
3. Personalization and customization of customers help entrepreneurs to understand
the behavior and choices of the customers

With the help of e-commerce [Bharati and Chaudhury(2015)], the entrepreneurs
can customizes their websites to reach people internationally. They can design the
website according to the need of the locals of that particular country.

It also provides the facility to personalize the customer choices, by understanding
the behavior through their past purchases and suggesting the products similar to
their previous choices. This in-turn enhances the satisfaction level of the
customers and profit margin of the entrepreneurs.(Bucko et al., 2018)
1. Interactivity

Interactivity feature of e-commerce provides the entrepreneurs, the facility to
interact with the people even before they become their customers. They can know
the requirements of the people, and can provide the products according to their
need only. This will decrease the chances of rejection of the product by the
customer and hence increases the profit margin of the entrepreneur. (Kim &
LaRose, 2004)
2. Omnipresence

E- commerce websites are characterised by its omnipresence behavior i.e it is
almost available everywhere and at any point in time. Customers can purchase
any products of different brands without physically going outside for shopping, at
a single platform and at any time of their choice from their desktop only. This will
help the entrepreneurs to reach out their business prospects and the customer can
also get their needs fulfilled. For instance: we can purchase ethnic wear of almost
all the popular brand from myntra.com at any time and also from anywhere.
(Asheim & Isaksen, 2002)
3. Advertisement and promotion

Before purchasing anything , the customers should know about products and
offers related to it and this can be easily achieved by advertisement and
promotion. E-commerce websites can deliver the advertisement and promotional
activity to the customer through the internet, very effectively and this will help to
influence the customer for purchasing the goods. For example , the present ecommerce websites like flipkart, amazon offers the season end sale and big
billion sale to the customers and advertise it so well over the internet , that when
these sales started customers are in the queue to purchase the goods, which in
turn enhances the profit margin of the sellers.
4. Information transparency

Availability of bulk information in e-commerce markets, compel the sellers to
keep the costs of the goods nominal. Price transparency is characterized by the
process ransparency refers to the ease with which customers can compare the
variety of prices for a specific goods . for example customers can compare the
cost of a particular policy, offered by different companies , and then can decide
which one to purchase. (Isenberg, 2010)