North-eastern states still a lucrative market for Indian ecommerce companies

Since the emergence of Ecommerce on the Indian turf, various cities from South, North & West India has contributed largely to online sales. North-east has been the region that contributes the least. But the statistics might change soon as according to fresh reports North-Eastern states of India is steadily becoming one of the fastest growing ecommerce market.

Demand and Supply

The potential was always there. Demand was always there. Quite a few discussion threads on Quora and other forums had people asking a question ‘Why don’t shopping sites deliver in North-east.’ This threw light on the fact that people from this terrain were willing to shop online. But what posed as a problem for ecommerce players was logistics. Lack of good transportation, bad connectivity, high taxes and basic infrastructure derailed the plans to enter this market for a long time. However many ecommerce players have managed to crack that code to an extent.

Stupendous Growth in Ecommerce Revenue

Several online players like Snapdeal, Amazon, Flipkart, Bluestone, First Cry, Myntra, FashionandYou and ShopClues cater to this region and have noticed a substantial increase in their revenue coming from North-east. Ganesh Subramanian from Myntra that has distribution centres in Guwahati and Aizawl, Mizoram said, “When we started the Aizawl centre, it showed us 500% jump in sales.”

Similarly, founder of online jewellery store, Bluestone shared that 11% of their revenue comes from this region which is a huge number. Ashish Chitravanshi, Snapdeal’s Vice President- Operations commented, “The region is among the fastest-growing markets in the country for us. We have been steadily growing in double digits month on-month in the North-East markets.”

What Makes North-East Population Click?

People of north-east have always been known from their chic and eccentric fashion sense. Rock culture which is celebrated in quite a few cities of this region like Shillong, Guwahati, Gangtok, Aizwal and many more has particularly infused great fashion sensibilities in folks of these states just like any other metropolitan and urban Indian city. That’s why branded fashion accessories and apparels fly off the e-shelf quickly.

With the advent of technology, it has made possible for them to buy high-fashion brands in just a matter of few clicks. Jabong’s co-founder Praveen Sinha is of an opinion that, “North East is doing really well in terms of acceptance (of online retail) and the market potential is also very big. The taste for fashion is very refined there and customers are trendy, experimental and are ready to try out fresh arrivals.”

With so much potential and a huge unexplored market all set to be used, North-east seems to be the next region which will yield great profits. However this is only possible if challenges that come with this mountainous territory, which has limited road and flight connectivity, are combated well. One way to go is setting up own distribution centres and tying up with local logistics partners. Most importantly government needs to pay heed and pump in money to develop infrastructure, technology and law in North East.