Delhi remains top city in e-shopping, but Jaipur overtakes Bangalore: eBay India Census

Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, lost some of its shine when the pink city of Jaipur overtook it and moved up one notch to the third spot among the top five e-commerce hubs in India in 2012, as revealed by the fifth edition of the annual eBay India Census Guide. By e-com hubs, we mean the markets for eBay India or in other words, which city did the maximum shopping on that platform. The rest of the rankings remained the same with Delhi claiming the top spot for the fourth consecutive year, Mumbai coming in second and Chennai retaining the fifth place in the list.

The eBay India Census is an annual e-commerce report, designed to throw light on online buying and selling behaviour across the country. The current listing has been done on the basis of eBay transactions happening during July 2011-December 2012.

As for number of e-com transactions, the state of Rajasthan is certainly moving up fast. It has gone up three places and stands third in 2012, as against a dismal sixth in 2011. Maharashtra claims the top spot as before, followed by Delhi, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. However, both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka fell by one notch in 2012 while Andhra Pradesh went down to the seventh spot (earlier it was fifth). On the other hand, Kerala had gone up by three places to rank No. 9 while West Bengal went down to 12th, from the 10th place in 2011.

Predictably, the West Zone dominates the e-commerce scenario with 38 per cent of total sales, followed by the North Zone (30 per cent), South Zone (26 per cent) and East Zone (6 per cent).

In terms of categories, electronics remains the top, accounting for 48 per cent transactions on eBay India. The report also estimated that the number of women buyers had increased significantly, leading to the increase in sales across lifestyle categories to 41 per cent.

The company claims to have around 30,000 sellers on the eBay India platform in 2012, compared to 23,000 sellers till 2011. Also, the portal has 5 million registered users from around 3,311 cities in India.

Headquartered in California, eBay Inc. was founded in 1995 and in 2011, the total value of goods sold on eBay amounted to $68.6 billion, more than $2,100 every second. The company made its foray into India in 2004 by acquiring Baazee.com and eBay India was launched in 2005. Recently, eBay India also launched a new category called eBay Daily for packaged food items.

Interesting nuggets

According to the study, eBay India is selling mobile accessories and health/beauty products every one minute; collectible coins and notes every two minutes and a stamp in every four minutes.

The census also revealed that Delhi had a sweet tooth (buyers from the capital city bought the most chocolate) while Jaipur users were buying maximum number of toy cars on eBay India. Bangalore, largely known as a tech city, gunned for yoga videos; Kolkata bought the most Tibetan collectibles and Ahmedabad women fell for lingerie. Interestingly, Uttar Pradesh was all for buying horse saddles (the most in 2012) while West Bengal bought maximum number of fishing hooks on eBay.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)