E-Commerce Player Flipkart Slightly Impacted by Demonetisation Drive

By Manu Sharma

Flipkart, India’s leading e-commerce player has been slightly impacted by the Prime Minister’s Demonetisation drive. Sachin Bansal, ‎Exec Chairman and Co-Founder at Flipkart addressing the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) 2016 in Bengaluru says, “The move slightly impacted us but not very much. We have always seen a 50:50 ratio between cash and digital payment and with this move, all transactions are now on digital payment. So our customers, who were paying cash on delivery are now gone for digital payment. We have been pushing our new payment platform - UPI - and anyone with a bank account can set up our UPI in just 5 minutes and start transacting.”

PhonePe Internet Pvt. Ltd, owned by Flipkart, aunched its Unified payment interface (UPI) platform earlier, as it seeks to take on the likes of Paytm and Freecharge for a piece of India’s fast-growing digital payments business. 

Bansal was addressing a questions raised by Vikram Chandra, Consulting Editor at NDTV on impact of monetization in India, Bansal says the Jan Dhan Yojana has opened a number of accounts in rural India but not many have left any money in their accounts. But the growth of smart mobiles in the country will help the Indian e-commerce industry grow. The government should give subsidiary on smart mobiles to the poor. Also the fast growth of technology has enabled the mobile prices to drop considerably for someone with an small income can now afford a smart phone, he said.

If the e-commerce bubble with burst?
Reacting to Vikram Chandra’s question If the e-commerce bubble with burst?, Bansal says micro level shopping will also go digital but is still small in India, compared to China and US with 10%-12% growth in online shopping while it is only 2% in India but the efficiency and management principals are much better here and we will attract a lot more consumers shortly. Presently, we are thriving on technology which is an integral part of our company and so will continue to invest in data science and artificial intelligence going forward.

MNC Players Don’t Scare Me

MNC players like Amazon, Alibaba are here to stay but we are not scared of them. They are catering to the elite high income group. But in India localization is important. Like I always say don’t follow the NASA model but follow our own Indian ISRO model going forward. This is the way to success in India.