E-Paper
E-commerce expenditure records17% hike on utilities, 8.3% dip on travel
A study released by digital payments company, Wibmo, revealed that while 55% of the spend on e-commerce sites were on essentials before the lockdown, it shot up to 72.5% during the lockdown. Shopping, too, saw a hike and went from 10% of total e-commerce spends to 12.2%.
Indians spent 17.5% more on utilities and essentials on e-commerce sites during the lockdown, than they did before it. An analysis of spending patterns showed a change in the way Indians spent, with online transactions on travel, food and beverages and business services showing a dip.
Spending on shopping, however, continued to grow.
A study released by digital payments company, Wibmo, revealed that while 55% of the spend on e-commerce sites were on essentials before the lockdown, it shot up to 72.5% during the lockdown. Shopping, too, saw a hike and went from 10% of total e-commerce spends to 12.2%.
Games and entertainment, which accounted for 12% of all spending on e-commerce sites earlier, went down to 9.4% during the lockdown. Travel-related transactions saw a huge dip -- it accounted for 9% of all spending earlier and went down to 0.7% during the lockdown.
Transactions on Indian e-commerce sites at large saw a dip of 30% during the Janta Curfew, called for by Prime Minister Modi on March 22. In the week after that, Indian consumers returned online with spending making a recovery of 50%.
In the week after the Janta Curfew, RuPay spend climbed back to about 98% of normal volumes but continued to fluctuate between 87% to 98%, the findings said. Later in the week, RuPay saw a further rise of 10%.
Visa and Mastercard purchases, however, could match up to only 86% of their normal volumes and remained between 70-86%. Average ticket size during the lockdown dropped by 25%.
“We process over 2.2 billion transactions annually giving us unique insight into consumer behavior and spend patterns. The shift in online purchases was inevitable as our consumers stayed at home during this tough period,” Wibmo CEO Govind Setlur said in a release.
