Rural eCommerce

Presented By:
Pankaj Senapati(UR14062)
Satyabrata Nayak(UR14075)

Definition of ECommerce
Electronic Commerce (EC) is where business
transactions take place via telecommunications
networks, especially the Internet.
Electronic commerce describes the buying and
selling of products, services, and information via
computer networks including the Internet.
The infrastructure for EC is a networked computing
environment in business, home, and government.
E-Business describes the broadest definition of EC.
It includes customer service and intra business
tasks. It is frequently used interchangeably with
EC.

Major Ecommerce Sites in

India

E-commerce in
rural areas
Although over the past five years ecommerce has grown unprecedentedly in
India, it has not touched rural lives in any
big way..

Whileunicornslike Flipkart, Snapdeal and

Amazon have been trying to get inroads in
rural markets, some e-commerce startups
like iPay, StoreKing and Inthree solely focus
on rural markets.

Inthrees consumer facing platform Boonbox acts as a

vehicle to enter the rural markets for merchants.
It aggregates demand for various products and then
places order with the merchant.
Boonbox is a sister concern of Inthree and was recently
launched in select districts of TamilNadu and Karnataka.
It focuses on catering to the aspirations of the rural
customer, leveraging years of experience in last mile
distribution and providing expertise in working in rural
markets.
Inthree is inspired from Indian Peter Drucker
C.K.Prahlad

launched the sale of solar lamps

through select post offices in Tamilnadu
in 2011
diversified into working with various
non-traditional channels like NGOs and
agri boards
sold over 7,00,000 units of various
durables, to around half a million
customers in rural areas
E-commerce can improve lifestyle in rural
areas
by providing more choices
by providing accessibility to products

How Boonbox
works for
merchants?

For the end merchant, Boonbox is a platform to

establish foothold in rural markets.
Inthree aggregates demand for various products
and then places order with the merchant.
The product procured by Inthree goes through the
companys warehouse where it is checked for
quality and packaged for despatch to customers
homes.
Currently, it has a presence in all districts of
TamilNadu and Karnataka and entered the Andhra
Pradesh market recently.

Traction and
revenue
The venture is profitable for many years
and in August 2014 it raised funds from
Indian Angel Network (IAN).
GMV=50 crores
Gross Profit > 2crores

Major challenges
& future plans
customer acquisition at reasonable cost
lack of internet penetration
poor penetration of credit cards
last mile connectivity
Inthree, currently, has a team of 40, which is
expected to expand to around 100 in the next one
year
It has a plan to expand the range of products and
also start operations in North Indian States.

Conclusion
Accessibility and lack of options (thin
catalogue) with organized retail have driven ecommerce in India to a large extent.
As of now, rural India is completely deprived
of organized retail, hence success of ecommerce in rural areas is more evident.
However, supply chain and last mile
connectivity are some major hurdles
With governmentefforts to connectevery
village with broadband connectivity, future of
e-commerce in rural India looks very
promising.