E-commerce to log over 50% growth this year: First Data

Driven by sustained growth of the online travel booking industry and new business models for the insurance and mutual funds sectors, the domestic e-commerce market is poised to grow at 50 per cent this year, according to an industry data aggregator.

“We do expect over 50 per cent growth in this calendar year, depending on certain sectors. The online travel booking segment will be the major contributor to this growth,” First Data Corporation vice-president and country manager Amrish Rau said.

The total market size stood at Rs 46,520 crore last year, a massive jump from Rs 8,147 crore in 2007, he said.

The online travel industry comprising rail and air ticket bookings, etc, cornered 81 per cent of the market share at Rs 37,890 crore last year, he added. Besides, the e-payments system is also expanding in the mutual funds and insurance segments, apart from the public sector space, with government bodies increasingly adopting this route for both accepting and making payments, he said.

While the spends on online air travel bookings grew 39 per cent last year over 2010, rail travel bookings clocked 11 per cent growth during the same period, First Data said.

“The first three months of this year itself saw 31 per cent and 28 per cent growth in online air travel and train bookings, respectively,” he said.

First Data is a global technology and payments processing leader with financial institutions, large and small businesses as well as government agencies as major clients.

However, among segments such as e-tailing, digital downloads, paid contents subscription, etc, e-tailing contributed 31 per cent share, fetching a revenue of Rs 2,700 crore, Rau said.

“E-tailing, however, will continue to grow in the same range over the next three years,” he said.