"E-commerce will grow to $20 bn by 2017'

India's e-commerce industry will contribute over $20 billion by 2017 to the country's incremental GDP, according to a research report by consulting and research firm McKinsey.

"In 2012, Indian e-commerce industry crossed the $10-billion mark, of which $8 billion alone was from travel," said Rajan Anandan, managing director at Google India, quoting figures from the report. India's e-commerce industry size three years ago was a mere $2 billion. It is expected to reach $80-100 billion size by 2017. There are 150 million internet users today in India, which is expected to increase to 450-500 million by 2017.

Anandan also spoke of the transformational changes in e-commerce firms. "Earlier most of the e-commerce firms started on desktop-based or web-based platform but today they have a full-fledged mobile version." "Soon there will be mobile-only transactions," says Anandan. He is also hopeful of the e-commerce business rising through tier-2 and 3 cities. "Today over 50% of the total transaction on e-commerce platforms comes from outside metro cities. We need is more investment on the logistics side of the e-commerce companies to facilitate and aid these national-level transactions," he said.

India's largest e-commerce company today sees atleast 10,000 deals per day and the largest retail firm in 2012 was an e-commerce firm according to McKinsey.

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