Deep Dive: India Rising Part 3— E-Commerce Enablers in India

Executive Summary

This is the third report in our India Rising series focusing on the Indian startup ecosystem. In this report, we look at various e-commerce enablers—firms such as logistics providers and software solution providers that provide support functions in the online retail process.

• Enabling functions take up some 19% of the total revenue of stable-growth Indian e-commerce firms.
• In 2015, India spent about $302 billion, or 14.4% of its GDP, on logistics and transportation.
• We estimate that online retailers in India spent some $1.8 billion on technology for running their websites and apps in 2015.
• The Indian digital payments market was worth some $50 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow tenfold to $500 billion in 2020.
• We believe that e-commerce enablers have enormous growth potential in the still-young online retail sector in India, as domestic e-tailers are not yet large enough to justify bringing enabling functions completely in-house.