Online Shopping – A ‘Growing’ Small Town Trend

CONNAUGHT PLACE, India - July 30, 2013 - PRLog -- 23^rdJuly 2013, Gurgaon: A recent study conducted by ShopClues.com, India's first &fastest growing managed marketplace, has revealed some interesting, upcoming trends  in online shopping in India. While New Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai continue to rule the roost as Top Cities for E-Commerce, a spate of small towns like - Jamshedpur, Mysore & Nasik have made it to the ranks of ‘Top Emerging Cities in 2013”.These towns are not far behind from their metro counterparts when it comes to logging on to the internet to shop for their favourite brands. The study is based on 1.4 million transactions conducted on the ShopClues website between Jan – July 2013.

Similarly, Emerging Categories too have a bit of surprise in store. While Entry level phones, smartphones, LED TVs emerged as Top categories, interestingly, it is the advent of Gourmet foods and pet grooming as a part of Emerging Categories which is noteworthy. This indicates a mild sway in e-shopping patterns, where luxury and lifestyle products move to centre stage. Also, residents of small towns now have disposable income, and are exposed to cable TV, DTH and internet (130mn cable & satellite household in India) that fuels aspirations to own global brands and buy products available in malls in metro cities. This has led to new categories taking a position among the emerging categories.

Sandeep Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, ShopClues stated, “ A lot of factors are encouraging the current boom in E-Commerce in the country - rise in penetration of Smartphones, better internet infrastructure, education and income level are a few prominent ones. We are seeing a lot of demand of goods from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Organised retail is hardly a pan-India phenomenon and large chains make up less than 10 percent of the market. As a result, smaller towns often don’t have access to the merchandise available in Metros. This leads to them logging on the internet to find and order the product of their choice”.

Another major contributor to the growth of E-Commerce is the emergence of managed market places like ShopClues.com. With a mass reach across 9k cities and with 12k merchants on board, 1.2m SKUs across 900+ categories, ShopClues brings together an entire gamut of merchants from varied categories to sell their products online to buyers across India. While ShopClues manages the entire process of seller quality check, procurement of product from the seller, packing and shipping, the buyer is just left to log on, browse across categories, order and pay. Thus, ShopClues has managed to deliver a very pleasurable experience to the online buyers.

About ShopClues.com: Founded in July 2011 in Silicon Valley, ShopClues.com is India's first and the largest managed marketplace that connects buyers and sellers online and offers a trusted and safe online shopping experience. With our customer centric approach we provide the best online shopping experience to our customers - starting from the great selection, low price, ease of use, fast delivery, and ending with the best customer service you have ever experienced. ShopClues ships in over 9k cities across India and has thousands of online stores. ShopClues is funded by leading institutional investors, is an Indian subsidiary of Clues Network Inc., a US Corporation and is based out of Gurgaon.