Online shopping in India - how its going to be different from other places
I think online shopping is going to be very different in India from how it works in the USA for the following reasons:
1. A few fundamental things like cheap, reliable and timely postal & courier services are missing. As a result its difficult for existing merchants to just go online & serve customers not close to them geographically. Another fundamental need for online shopping is payment methodologies - Credit cards arent very prevalent in India, except for the Metropolitan cities & there too its the salaried class & upper business classes that have credit cards.(Also see point 3)
2. While convenience is becoming inreasingly important for the Indian customer, trust is very difficult to build. It will take some time & trust-building for indians to start paying online. Air travel seems to have opened a way, but for commodities, I have my doubts, I'll be happy to be proven wroong.
3. Most importantly the economics of payments in India. A large volume of transactions in India are cash based, I am not certain how many non-salaried people will adopt shopping methods which are completely accounted for. A classic case in point is the success of pre-paid schemes over post-paid schemes in the cell phone space, despite the convenience of the post-paid models.
To me, there are 2 possible ways, in which online shopping in India becomes successful.
1. A comparison shopping site compares prices with not just online but offline merchants also & factors in location & time-to-deliver.
2. A large corporation (think Reliance) sets up marketplaces in their retail chain & are accesible online