No of users transacting online to be 39 mn by '15: study

As internet penetration is increasing and e-commerce becoming more secure, the number of people transacting online is expected to touch 39 million by 2015, says a study.

According to the study by financial services firm Avendus, this will also provide a further fillip to the Indian e-commerce market which is estimated to grow to $24 billion by 2015 from $6.3 billion now.

At present, about 8-10 million people in India transact online, which is about 11% of the 80 million Internet users in the country, which represents a penetration of seven% of the population and 17% of the urban population, says the study titled 'Indian Digital Consumer Industry'.

The number of transacting users in the US was 170 million in 2010, comprising of 69% of the overall Internet users there. This number has been growing at 8% for the last six years.

In India, a large part of the transaction takes place on travel-related sites, it said.

"The number of unique users transacting on travel sites (only) are estimated to be around 6-7 million and for non-travel ecommerce sites is around 2-3 million today," it said.

In India, online travel revenues are dominated by ticket bookings, with air and train bookings accounting for close to 90% of the segment's revenues. Bus travel, hotels and tour packages have been slower to evolve but are now growing rapidly.

"The online travel market is estimated at Rs 24,900 crore ($5.5 billion) in 2011. This makes India one of the most lucrative markets for online travel," the study said.

While 57% of the online travel revenue came from air travel, train and hotel packages contributes 37% and five%, respectively, in 2010-11. The remaining one% was from bus bookings.

Online travel is expected to grow at 22% to reach Rs 54,800 crore by 2015, it added.

Online train ticket bookings are estimated to be around Rs 8,000 crore ($1.8 billion) in 2010-11, accounting for around 32% of the overall ticket bookings. This is expected to grow to Rs 10,000 crore in 2012.

However, etailing (mass merchants, niche, and deals) will catch up with online travel by 2015, with each of them contributing about $12 billion to the total e-commerce market in 2015, it said.