Women Who Are Leading The E-Commerce Game in India

As SheThePeople.TV gears up to host its annual Digital Women Awards, lets talk about how women are at the forefront of the e-commerce game in India. Venture capitalists are betting big on e-commerce fashion and home portals, and many are founded by and catered to women.

comScore’s Women on the Web report days that women account for 58 percent of all online purchases. Online fashion has seen the biggest growth, followed by health and beauty, and household products. Categories like jewellery and home decor are also gaining traction.

Big conglomerates have all set up their own e-commerce clothing sites, pointing to the viability of the e-tailing market. Reliance has Ajio, Aditya Birla Group has Abof, and Tata has Tata Cliq. Abof had an annual gross merchandise value of Rs 200 crore just in its first year.

The online retail space is to grow three times and will have 175 million shoppers by 2020 says a study conducted by Google and A.T Kearney. Women buyers will double their share in the online spend to about 40% in 2020, says the report.

Here are some women who are leading the e-commerce game in India.

1. Radhika Aggarwal- She is the Co-Founder of ShopClues, a marketplace which connects buyers and sellers online. They employ 900 people, and ship out 3 million products over a monthly basis. Focused towards mass markets and Tier 2 and 3 cities. Aggarwal tells SheThePeople.tv that impeccable execution is the key to starting a business. She says that 70 percent of traffic comes from the mobile. She says that Digital is a revolution encourages people to do a startup..

Also Watch: She’s Building India with Shopclues: Meet Radhika Aggarwal

2. Suchi Mukherjee- She founded retail platform, Limeroad which she started because she noticed that women were not able to discover products online well. She wanted to offer women an easy and fun browsing experience, akin to flipping through a dishpan magazine. The company raised $50 million in funds last year, and has grown to 400 employes.

3.  Upasana Taku- She is the founder of mobile and online payment system, MobiKwik. The company has around 30 million users and its payments are used at more than 75,000 stores. It has raised $30 million in funding thus far. Taku who has worked at PayPal was recently featured on the Forbes Asia “Women to Watch.”

4. Shuchi Pandya- After studying Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Pandya started online fashion jewellery brand, Pipa+Bella. The brand provides trendy and affordable fashion jewellery to women between 20-35 years of age, living in urban India. Her team launches 100 new designs every month! The company recently launched an app since 70 percent of their purchases come from handheld devices.

5. Ananya Birla- Ananya Birla launched CuroCarte, an inventory-based global luxury e-commerce platform in September this year. The target age group for the decorative and utility based products is women who are 28 and onwards, says Birla who is only 22 years of age. The brand sources its products from countries like Spain, Portugal, Vietnam and Thailand. The idea behind the website was to use technology to curate products from an otherwise unorganised market.

Read More Stories By Tara Khandelwal