After black and White, it's now turn of 'brown money'

The online portal olx.com has come up with the term to describe goods that are no longer used and can be easily resold

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Urban Indians have stocked goods worth Rs 22,000 crore, which they no longer use and can be easily resold. Assessing the size and potential of used goods economy, online portal olx.com has termed this locked money as “brown money”.

A survey conducted by IMRB, a leading international market research and consultancy firm, and olx.com, an online marketplace portal to sell and buy used goods, has come out with insights on value of stored goods in Indian urban households that can be resold.

The survey was conducted in 12 sample cities and the value of the goods stocked was Rs 17 crore. When projected across urban India, the value is expected to be around Rs 22,000 crore.

Fifteen different types of goods were captured in the survey. Mumbai topped the list with highest amount of stock in households. The most stocked categories were kitchen and home appliances, mobile phones, clothing, watches and books.

About 4,800 consumers were chosen randomly across the age group of 19-60 years for the study.

Amarjit Batra, CEO olx.com said the value of the locked goods is so huge that people need to start thinking of its monetary value.

According to the survey, most Indians stock goods because they feel they will use it at a later date but that rarely happens. Second major reason was change of preferences and taste, even though the product was in good condition. Emotional attachment to the product was the third most popular reason.

Citing a change in the mindset, Dipankar Sen, Associate Vice President at IMRB International said that the younger generation is less sentimental and looks for faster product upgrade. He also says that with product life cycles getting shorter, customer to customer classified companies need to target the mobile generation and provide right platform for C2C trading.