Simplifying e-commerce: Issues that should be addressed first to draw users

Modern platforms will have to address the vernacular, voice and credit barriers

Deepika lives in a nondescript village in Chaibasa district of Jharkhand and runs a small grocery store. Educated till Class 8 in a school where the medium of instruction was the local language and in a district marked by low internet infrastructure and literacy, she is among the several million citizens that new-age companies are aiming to bring online. However, it’s easier said than done.
 
That’s because Deepika is among the next 200 million citizens who will be very different from those who’ve formed the e-commerce user base so far. While the first set of e-commerce inhabitants were mostly