Ahmedabad slips to 9th rank as largest e-commerce hub: eBay

Ranked seven last year under eBay India Census, Ahmedabad has dropped to rank nine as the largest e-commerce hub in 2009. The online marketplace, which offers 350,000 items under over 2,000 categories for trading, recently unveiled its second census where Ahmedabad ranked ninth largest e-commerce hub, after Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Jaipur, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Pune.

According to Muralikrishnan B, director, category and product management, eBay India Pvt. Ltd., an e-commerce hub is defined as online global as well domestic trading from a city or state.

"The eBay India Census is based on transactions that took place between January 2008 and June 2009. In eBay Census 2008, Ahmedabad ranked seventh while in Census 2009, it is ranked ninth. However, the census has also revealed that Ahmedabad buys the most Hindi art films online in the country. Also, Ahmedabad, along with Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai, is a profit buying city, which means it sells more items than it buys," he added.

Under the eBay Census 2009, India has over 2,471 e-commerce hubs in 28 states and seven union territories. In terms of category, while the domestic market saw more technology products being traded online through eBay, exports comprised lifestyle products. "Technology is India's favourite traded vertical category contributing to 44 per cent of transactions in eBay Census. For global trade, lifestyle is the clear winner at 64 per cent of all transactions followed by media and collectibles at 15 per cent each," said Muralikrishnan.

eBay India has over three million registered users from 2,471 cities. According to Muralikrishnan, at any given time, there are over 300,000 live listings on eBay India website.