SMEs Turn to e-Commerce to Expand their Businesses

e-Commerce has gradually progressed to be the new shopping process. As it provides the convenience of shopping from one’s comfort zone as well as the privilege to return the purchased products without having to bear any loss has made customers to embrace e-Commerce more happily. In conjunction with its existing popularity, e-Commerce site’s customer base witnessed a dramatic rise with the sudden outbreak of pandemic. The survey ‘COVID-19 and E-commerce’ reveals that the pandemic has triggered the consumer to incline towards digital world which indeed has accelerated online shopping like never before, as people find it convenient and safe to buy their essential without stepping out of their safe zone.

This warm welcome for e-Commerce sites has indeed reflected on its elevated market. According to SEO Expert Witness – Peter Kent, about $212 billion has been spent between April 2020 and June 2020 on e-Commerce this indicates 32 percent rise in e-Commerce shopping across the globe as compared to regular days before pandemic. However, India’s e-Commerce industry is also rapidly growing and it is expected to surpass the US to become second largest e-Commerce market in the world by 2034. Thus, it is predicting to reach $99 billion by 2024 from $30 billion in 2019 with a CAGR of 27 percent.

e-Commerce site’s growing popularity among consumers have indeed created a stable platform for the emerging small and medium enterprises as well as the country’s traditional handicraft makers. Alongside, the handicrafts and other products grocery and fashion apparels are serving as key drivers for e-Commerce’s incremental growth. Hence, its online reach is anticipated to touch 10.7 percent by 2024 from just 4.7 percent in 2019. Therefore, these e-Commerce are turning as a stable platform for the small and medium enterprises.

Even before the pandemic outbreak, SMEs had certain issues to sustain in the competitive businesses buts the entry of COVID-19 worsened the scenario for these budding organizations. Thus, can the e-Commerce offering a stable platform for these SMEs to explore their customer base in the wider aspect. Through this platform the business that has been setup in Northern India which had a restricted customer base from this locality. However, these small businesses could now deliver its products down south or worldwide broadening its consumers.

These online platforms not only deliver the product at the customer’s door step it also provide various features such as seasonal and festival discount, product feedback and reviews that aids customers to compare and decide their purchase. Thus, many small businesses have enrolled to these e-Commerce platforms to avail the benefit of expanding their customer base by reaching out to new customers. According to the survey conducted by Nielsen, more than 85 percent of small businesses on Amazon are expecting to reach out to new customers and witness an elevated graph in the sales. Alongside, the organization is also introducing various eye catching deal and offers to save and avail rewards on purchases especially during the festival season.

Considering the golden opportunity, over 20,000 offline stores have enrolled to these e-Commerce platform to cash on in this festival season of the year. On noticing the raising demand, the e-Commerce giant Amazon has also launched Amazon Easy to support the local entrepreneurs to set up stores with additional space for Amazon packages and Amazon Pay Smart Stores especially for the kiranas stores and small business sellers. Likewise, Walmart owned Flipkart is also focusing on reinforcing the SMEs across the country. Thus, it has associated with Paytm to offer attractive deals to the customers in this festival season. Considering the benefits, more than 70 percent of new sellers from smaller cities has associated with Flipkart.

With this ongoing status of e-Commerce the country could witness a greater reach of smaller businesses from the tier II and III cities and other small enterprises would get a wider exposure to the consumers and could make huge profits.

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