Five years ago, Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant that went public in September with the biggest IPO ever, co-opted the date. In a bid to increase sales in the lull between China’s Golden Week national holiday in October and the Christmas season, Alibaba started to offer deals on its online shopping platforms, touting the day as an excuse for self-gifting and personal indulgence.
In 2009, consumers spent 50m yuan (£5m) and 27 merchants offer discounts.
In 2012, Alibaba, which acts as an online marketplace similar to Amazon or eBay, trademarked several terms relating to Singles Day.
In 2013, 20,000 retailers took part, and Singles Day sales overtook Cyber Monday’s $1.46bn (£0.92bn) worth of sales by 8.42am. Over the whole day, consumers spent $5.8bn -- far more than the combined Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales from all US companies.
And this year looks set to trump that. According to an Alibaba-related Twitter feed, which is live-tweeting the shopping frenzy, consumers spent 1bn yuan (£100m) in the first three minutes and $1bn (£630m) in the first 17 minutes. Within the first hour, shoppers had spent more than $2bn. Read detailed article.
According to a report, There is a vast potential for the
e-commerce sector to grow in India with the implementation of the
Digital India programme, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communications & IT
Minister, said at the 10th national summit on E-governance & Digital
India organised by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of
India (ASSOCHAM) in New Delhi yesterday.
Prasad said, “I see a vast opportunity
for e-commerce…I see almost an explosion of various kind of
availability of services through e-commerce.”
Retail exports (e-tailing) is a
growing sector in India and e-commerce plays a key role in it. According
to the Federation of Indian Exporters Association (FIEO), e-commerce
exports from India in 2013 are estimated at around $1 billion and
expected to grow over 100% in 2014.
Meanwhile, more and more people in
India are trying to sell their products online. According to Ravi
Shankar Prasad, people in rural India are looking up to the success of
e-commerce-based companies such as India’s Flipkart and China’s Alibaba.
He said, “We can have couple of Alibaba(s) in coming future if we are
able to rollout this [Digital India] programme very well.”
The Digital India programme aims to
improve Internet and telecom connectivity in the rural parts of India in
three years. According to official sources, around 50,000 panchayats
currently have access to the Internet through optical fibre network. The
Digital India programme targets expanding it to over 2,50,000
panchayats by 2016-17.
Prasad also said that there is a need
to encourage electronic manufacturing in India. At present, India
imports electronic goods worth $100 billion annually and it is estimated
to grow to over $400 billion by 2020, which will be more than India’s
fuel imports. Prasad said that the government is providing incentives to
companies and urged domestic manufacturers to produce low cost
smartphones to help people in the rural parts get access to e-governance
and other online services.
0 comments:
Post a Comment