E-tailing industry sales slips in October to December period

Online retail business or e-tail industry’s sales were lower in the last quarter of 2017. The festive season sales which began in September didn’t seem to interest shoppers’ interest.

In the July to September quarter sales crossed $20 billion. This was also attributed to higher number of shoppers from Tier II+ cities along with robust sales by e-commerce sites like Flipkart and Amazon.

However, despite the higher number of shoppers from the Tier II cities, sales were marginally down in the October to December period.

“The e-tailing industry had a very positive OND-quarter with the GMV touching nearly USD 20 Bn, primarily driven by the increase in the number of shoppers from T2+ cities,” a report by RedSeer research said on Tuesday.

Image Source: Redseer report

However, it should be noted that in the preceding months, sales amounted to just $15 billion. There was a 33% increase in monthly active shoppers in 2017.

In 2016, there were just 15 million active monthly shoppers. This figure had increased to 20 million in 2017.

Growth in number of unique shoppers from 2016 to 2017 in Tier II+ cities registered an advance of 34%, an earlier report by RedSeer showed.

“Going forward we feel that these new shoppers who have found value in online shopping will continue to shop online and more new users who have come online powered by Jio will adopt online shopping,” the report said.