India’s Millennials Dial Up Mobile Shopping

Young adults in India are using their smartphones for shopping online at an increasing rate.

According to eMarketer, it’s expected that younger generations in India will help drive the number of smartphone users in the country to 267.1 million this year, showing a drastic 19.5 percent increase over 2016.

A recent survey of adult smartphone owners under 35 in India, conducted by digital marketing firm Regalix, revealed that 83 percent respondents had used their mobile device to shop online.

But just 28 percent of this group actually made a weekly purchase using their device, showing that despite the popularity of mobile shopping only a minority of smartphone shoppers actually made a purchase with any significant frequency.

The survey also showed that adults in India have a strong preference for using mobile apps, with 94 percent expressing that apps were more convenient than mobile websites. With mobile apps, retailers have the opportunity to wield greater control over the user experience and initiate direct communication with shoppers via push notifications.

According to reports, the nation’s eCommerce market is expected to generate $120 billion worth of revenue by the end of the decade, four times the value of today’s market. Researchers point to India as the fastest-growing eCommerce market on the planet.

That shuffling of leading markets will come largely on the tailwinds of demographic shifts, such as India’s population skewing younger (as 70 percent of the population is under the age of 35) and also emerging more fully into the middle class. The online retail market in that country could grow nearly 30 percent to be worth as much as $63 billion by 2020, according to the research. By 2034, the market will be worth more than $2 trillion, estimates from Worldpay show.