India Country Guide 2018 Cross-Border Trading Report - IMRG
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India Country Guide 2018 Cross-Border Trading Report A report researched and compiled by IMRG, supported by
INTRODUCTION CONTENTS
India is a country full of contradictions. On one hand, It describes what Indian shoppers are looking for and Introduction 1
it might be very familiar indeed: as a reader, there’s a how to speak to them. Think your current trading
Contents 2
pretty good chance that your website is at least partly calendar is complicated, with Black Friday, Xmas &
built by Indian software developers, some of whom Boxing Day, Back-to-School and a few others? You About India 4
you know personally. On the other hand, suggest ain’t seen nothing yet. Indians shop at festivals and for India overview
‘India’ in a meeting, and you’ll hear words such as family events, and there are an awful lot of festivals,
‘exotic’ or ‘bizarre’ amongst the first responses from varying by region, celebrated by extended families The internet in India
your audience. This Passport is a guide to picking your spread across the country. The Retail Landscape in India 9
way through the contradictions of India, and of Indian
And lastly of course, you’ll need to navigate India’s Retail in India
ecommerce, to enable you to decide if it’s a country
labyrinthine bureaucracy, and rather variable
worth targeting, and if so, how to do it. Online retail in India
infrastructure, to actually get your goods to your
It starts with the basics. On the one hand, India has customers. The key issues, such as consumer and data Summary
1.25 billion people. On the other hand, not all of them protection law, payments, choice of parcel-delivery
Indians as online shoppers 15
can read, of those that can, not all can read English, channels, are discussed. So are its peculiar-sounding
and of those proficient in English, not all are likely to import customs and duties tariffs: anyone for CEX… Size of Prize
be able to afford your products. The practical reality or maybe you’d prefer CESS? Motivations
is that there’s a target market roughly the same size
In summary, India isn’t an easy target. It is, however, Summary
as Germany with roughly the same wealth as Poland,
a very interesting one: there are plenty of target
with ecommerce growing attractively, but probably How to reach Indian online shoppers 19
customers in several rapidly growing demographic
not explosively, strongly by about +20% per year and
segments; they are hungry for western goods and Channel Choice
expected to continue to do so for a long time to come,
brands; and both local and international competition
and with growth in sales of international brands Marketing to Indians
is relatively weak; there is steady and continuous
growing well ahead of this average.
growth in ecommerce supported by ambitious long Search & Content
It explains the key challenge. On the one hand, term forecasts; English is the language of commerce;
Summary
the Indian IT industry probably builds many of the the general internet landscape is the familiar one of
world’s biggest websites. On the other hand, unlike Facebook and Google; there is a real opportunity to Practicalities: legal, payment, logistics 24
pretty much any other country in the world, India is quickly gain first-mover advantage in your segment Legal issues
taking active steps to prevent e-Commerce from out- for your brand.
competing the millions of small shops that employ 8% Payment
India is indeed a country full of contradictions. But it’s
of the country’s workforce… and voters. Logistics
also a country full of customers.
The result is ever-changing regulatory restrictions that Summary
continue to prevent India from seeing the spectacular
growth in ecommerce experienced in some other
emerging markets, and exert a critical influence on
your choice of potential routes to market. However
an important side effect of these same changes is
that the big marketplaces – Flipkart and its fashion-
centric subsidiaries Myntra and Jabong, Snapdeal,
and Amazon.in - which currently dominate Indian
ecommerce are becoming much hungrier for, and
therefore more accommodating to, the needs of your
brand. The marketplaces route into India is worth
much more serious consideration than you might
normally give it for most countries… they aren’t (yet)
Alibaba but the direction of travel is becoming clear.
3
ABOUT INDIA Economics
Measured in GDP per head, India is not a wealthy country (Figure 2), and you might perhaps wonder why you
might target it at all. GDP growth is forecast to be 7.6% in the next couple of years, but although this is a rate
we’d probably be very happy with at home, it isn’t going to transform India into a highly developed economy
India overview in the near future. Per head averages, however, are not the best way to look at India.
Demographics
GDP per Capita comparison
There are a lot of people in India: 1,266 million of them1. Not all of them are potential customers for your
ecommerce offer. To start with, not all of them are literate in any language, let alone English (Figure 1): 70,000
60,000
India: Demographics by Age and Literacy
140,000,000 50,000
40,000
120,000,000
30,000
100,000,000 Illiterate Female
Illiterate Male 20,000
80,000,000
Literate Female 10,000
60,000,000 Literate Male
0
40,000,000 USA Germany UK France Poland Russia Morocco India
20,000,000 Figure 2 - GDP per Capita comparisons3
Even if they are literate, only a small proportion of its population can realistically afford what you are
0 likely to be selling. Over half of all households have an annual income of less than £2,000 per year,
and even the most optimistic forecasts predict less than 5% will have an income equivalent to the UK
40-44
45-49
50-54
55-59
60-64
65-69
70-74
75-79
80-84
85-89
90-94
95+
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
average (approximately £26,5004) by 2020 (Figure 3).
Figure 1 - Indian Demographics by Age and Literacy2
Distribution of Annual Household Income
Literacy levels are higher amongst the young, a demographic much more likely to be online:
83% of 20-24 year olds are literate, compared to only 43% of 65-69 year olds.
14% 2%
Indian demographics, including its national census, almost always make the distinction between urban and rural
populations – it really is almost two separate countries in terms of lifestyle. Roughly one third of the population is
defined as urban, which is currently where internet usage is concentrated.
14% £23k
Figure 3 - Distribution of Household Income5
1 CIA world factbook, 2016 3 International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook (October-2016)
2 Census of India 2011, www.censusindia.gov.in 4 ONS
5 BCG, The Tiger Roars, Feb 2012
4 5
Realistically, you are probably targeting just the top two income groups, roughly 6% of the overall population. Demographics of internet access
But… 6% of India’s population is still equivalent to a country the size of Germany. Moreover, that 6% are
almost all literate in English6 which in turn gives them a global perspective and an appetite for global brands. Published data points on actual numbers of internet users vary, but the general consensus appears to be about
20-25% of the population currently. This is forecast to increase rapidly, with much of the growth coming from
rural users, who by implication will almost certainly be using low bandwidth mobile-based connections: Figure 4.
Seasonality
Numbers of Indian Internet Users
India is big enough to encompass multiple climate zones. From a practical perspective, there are (sort of)
four seasons, but if your trading calendar is based on an Autumn-Winter (cold and wet) and Spring-Summer 700
(warm and dry) seasonality then it’s probably going to need some modification for India. The key factor is the
600
monsoon, which affects most of the key population centres, and happens in what in the UK we would think of
as summer. For most of the rest of the year, much of India is rather dry. 500
Millions
400
Rural
300 Urban
Summary
200
100
• There are a lot of people in India! Based on average statistics such as GDP/head,
0
they are rather poor, with literacy levels of only c65% in key age groups such as 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017FC 2018FC
30-40 year olds
• H
owever, general “average” statistics about India are unhelpful when considering
it as a cross-border ecommerce prospect. There is significant inequality of wealth Figure 4 - numbers of internet users, urban vs rural7
distribution, with around 6% of the population – about 80M people – likely to be More specific demographics are also changing rapidly. In 2013, only 27% of internet users were female, but this is
plausible targets forecast to become 34% by 2018; similarly 60% of users were under 25 by 2013, forecast to become 46% by 2018.
• T
he plausibly addressable market is comparable in size to Germany and in wealth As internet usage grows, use of non-English content is forecast to increase:
to Poland, and is growing steadily as India grows wealthier
• S
easonality in India should be borne in mind. Promoting your spring-summer “Currently over 200 million Indians are online and most of them are
catalogue just when the monsoon starts to pour down is unlikely to be an
optimal trading calendar
already proficient in English. We want to ensure that the next 300 million
who are not proficient in English find the internet just as easy to use”8
say Google, who have a vernacular language initiative ongoing.
Usage
What are all these users doing? This is a topic where that urban/rural divide is particularly stark (Figure 5).
THE INTERNET IN INDIA Even as internet access has rolled out to rural areas, this hasn’t translated into much online shopping;
meanwhile enthusiasm for online shopping accelerates apace in the towns and cities.
Key uses of the internet, change 2013-2015
Absolute basics
Indian domain names end in “.in” and are used in a manner rather consistent with the usage of “.uk” – companies Email & Messaging
2015 URBAN
are typically “.co.in” for example. Other Social Networking
It’s easy to register an Indian domain name. What isn’t so easy is to use it for retailing to Indian consumers. There Entertainment
are extensive restrictions, which we’ll cover later in this report in the section on FDI (foreign direct investment). 2015 RURAL
Suffice to say here that you certainly are not going to be setting up yourdomain.co.in and mirroring your home site Retail
on it with some minor localisation changes. 2015 BLENDED
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Figure 5 - percentage of time spent on various online activities 9
7 B
ased on data from IAMAI, the Internet and Mobile Association of India, which mainly comprises many big players such as Google,
6 BCG, India@Digital.Bharat, Jan 2015 Microsoft, Facebook, eBay, IBM, Flipkart, Ola and LinkedIn.
8 Managing Director Google India, Rajan Anandan, Nov 2014
9 Source: Comscore Media Metrix 2013, IMRB I-Cube 2015
6 7Mostly they are doing all this from mobile devices (Figure 6), over mobile connections: the fixed-line infrastructure
in India was very under-developed at the point when mobile phones began to appear, which in turn removed THE RETAIL LANDSCAPE IN INDIA – OFFLINE
many of the incentives to invest in it. There are less than 18M fixed line broadband connections in India for its
200M+ internet users10. AND ONLINE
Device usage Retail in India
In this section we take a short look at the overall retail landscape in India, before moving on to focus in more
detail on specifically online retail later in this section and for the remainder of this report.
Tablet
General retail landscape
Desktop/Laptop Unlike almost any other country in the world, India retailing is dominated by small stores and street stands,
known as the “unorganised” sector: 92% of all retailing by value falls into this sector12. A secondary distinction is
made between single-brand and multi-brand retailing, and until 2012 overseas investment was not permitted in
multi-brand retailers. The result has historically been fragmentation. Organised retailing is currently growing at
Basic Mobile around double the rate of unorganised (30% compared to 16%13), but that still leaves it with a long way to go.
Total retail sales were approximately USD $463bn by the end of 2015 (Figure 7):
Smart Mobile
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
India Retail Sales (USD Bn)
500
463
450
415
Figure 6 - device usage of internet users 11 400 370
350
300
USD Bn
Summary
250
200
• T
here are a lot of internet users in India. It currently ranks second only to
160
China in terms of absolute numbers of users
• T
here is a big gender skew, with only about a third of users currently being female 100
(although those female users who are online spend more time there)
50
• M
ost of these users are accessing via mobile devices over mobile connections.
0
By western standards, these are often quite slow. Any potential site implementation
2013 2014 2015
targeted at Indian users should plan for somewhat slower connections
• Time spent accessing retail sites has historically been low, but this is changing quite
Figure 7 - Total retail sales in India 14
rapidly in urban areas; rural use of online shopping remains low
• There are regulatory barriers to implementing retail ecommerce in India; simply
registering a domain and localising your existing site is almost certainly illegal
(see later in this report)
10 Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Aug 2016 12 Associated Chamber of Commerce, India (ASSOCHAM), Jan 2015
11 Google Consumer Barometer 2016 13 ibid
14 Euromonitor 2016
8 9India retail by category In practice, the organised retail sector targets exactly those consumers most relevant as targets for ecommerce:
the wealthiest 6-10% of the population, typically living in the biggest cities which are also most accessible for
The overall category split of retailing in India is shown in Figure 8. home-delivery (see Logistics later in this report). When considering India as an ecommerce target, therefore,
it generally makes sense to consider only the organised retail sector as representing a real opportunity. So,
for example, if you are a non-Indian retailer or brand considering selling fashion in India, the total size of the
Overall category breakdown of retail in India addressable fashion sector is currently 28% (according to Figure 9) of the 8% of retail which is organised i.e.
28% x 8% x 463$Bn = approximately 10$Bn.
11% 8%
6%
Top local retailers
5% A fragmented market, which has historically been restricted for foreign investment17, has resulted in a very
3% 3% unfamiliar (to non-Indians) landscape of top retailers (Figure 10):
10%
RETAIL GROUP TRADING AS… ONLINE STORE?
60% 4% Pantaloons Yes
Fashion Station No
Future Group
Brand Factory No
E-zone Yes
Yes, but not functional at the time of this
Food and grocery Other Apparel Mobile and telecom Food service REI Agro Ltd. 6TEN
assessment
Jewellery Consumer electronics Pharmacy
Fabindia Textiles, home furniture, apparels, and jewellery Yes
CEAT Tyres No
Figure 8 - Category split of overall Indian retail 15 RPG Group Zensar Technologies No
However it should be remembered that this includes the dominant unorganised sector. It may well be more KEC International Ltd. No
realistic to consider data for the organised sector only, as this probably more realistically defines the Westside No
accessible market for an overseas retailer. This organised retail category breakdown is shown in Figure 9. Tanishq Yes
Tata Group
Titan Yes
Category breakdown of organised retail in India Skinn Yes
Reliance Mart Yes
Reliance Footprint No
14% Reliance Retail
Reliance Trends No
Apparel and accessories Reliance Jewellery No
28% Shoppers Stop Yes
9% Food and groceries K Raheja Corp Group
Crossword Yes
Consumer durables
Aditya Birla Group Louis Phillipe No
Personal products
Jewellery stores Some have online stores, some don’t
Food services and entertainment
15% Watches No
Other Gitanjali
Apparel No
19% Chain stores No
15%
Figure 10 - top local retailers18
Conspicuously, and reflecting the current maturity and limitations of ecommerce in India, many of these top
retailers do not yet operate an online store.
Figure 9 - category breakdown of organised retail in India 16
15 India Internet, Goldman Sachs, May 2015
16 ASSOCHAM, Jan 2015 17 Although there are fewer restrictions today (excluding ecommerce – see below), foreign-majority-owned retailers are still obliged to
source 30% of their sales in India
18 IBEF 2016, supplemented by local research performed specifically for this report
10 11ONLINE RETAIL IN INDIA These sites were powering ahead, based heavily on a model of offering significant discounts compared to the
general market, when the Indian government stepped in and changed the rules again, to heavily restrict the use
of promotional discounting. Given that low pricing has traditionally been the engine of growth for ecommerce in
every country, this has put a short-term damper on overall ecommerce growth in India 23, but this is expected to
FDI Restrictions recover strongly once the market is reoriented to absorb these changes. (Moreover the secondary driver of growth
in markets such as India – the use of ecommerce by consumers to access to a broader range of brands and goods –
If you are reading this in a developed ecommerce market you will surely be aware that, prior to the current still remains strong.)
maturity-curve phase of competing on ever more convenient delivery or collection, the initial biggest impact
It is particularly good news for brands and retailers considering using these marketplaces as channels to enter
of ecommerce on retailing was price transparency. Even now, Amazon makes no bones about aiming to have
India, the same change in regulations also restricted any marketplace to making no more than 25% of its sales from
“lowest possible prices”19, and it is well known that it (along with many competitors) continuously price-scrapes
a single seller. It is believed that both Amazon and Flipkart were previously relying heavily on a large seller that
competitor websites to maintain its price advantage. Given that retailing employs around 8% of the Indian
they in practice owned to “work-around” the FDI rules.
workforce – and voters – in a mostly unorganised mom-and-pop-store sector, this is not a maturity trajectory
that the India government has found attractive. The effect of this change is to make them hungry for additional, larger, marketplace participants. If you are a brand
with strong international pedigree or significant potential appeal to (especially younger) India consumers, then
Moreover, unlike in China, where the advent of ecommerce has enabled millions of consumers to access goods
your negotiating position is strong. It is also likely that you can expect to see the active development of features
previously unavailable due to the communist-legacy of generally poor retail coverage, there is extensive retail
and functionality on the leading marketplaces designed to make them more attractive as places to present your
coverage in India, albeit small local retail “outdated” as seen through western eyes. The Indian government has
brand, and indeed this is already starting happen. Myntra, for example, already provide some basic shop-in-shop/
preferred to put restrictions in place, aimed at preventing the likely ferocious competition with all these small
brand-shop features, with more in the pipeline 24. 25
local retailers by large price-driven ecommerce sites offering broader choice of products.
The mechanism that India has chosen to manage the impact of ecommerce has been restrictions on Foreign
Direct Investment in ecommerce sites in India, built on a previous legacy of restricting FDI in traditional retail,
Size of ecommerce in India
partly lifted in 2012. The key rules can be extracted (from a morass of complexity) as:20 The overall size of retail ecommerce in India was estimated to be approximately USD $23bn in 2015 (Figure 11):
• F
DI is not permitted in multi-branded B2C ecommerce websites (although it is permitted up to 100% in
B2B sites)
Retail Sales and Penetration of eCommerce
• FDI is not permitted in single brand B2C ecommerce websites except that: 45 1.6%
»» FDI is permitted in single-brand B2C ecommerce websites associated with a brick-and-mortar store
40 1.4%
which sources at least 30% of its goods in India
35
% Penetration of eCommerce
»» In theory, single-brand cross-border ecommerce is subject to the same restriction: you can sell into 1.2%
India from a non-Indian website provided 30% of what you sell is sourced in India. In actual practice, 30
this is rather difficult to enforce 1.0%
Sales US$ Bn
25
• F
DI is now – the rules changed again in March 2016 – permitted up to 100% in C2C Marketplaces; 0.8%
20
in practice this simply regularised a situation that previously existed anyway21
0.6%
»» Nevertheless, to be a seller on an Indian marketplace, you will need a registered legal entity in India, 15
or use the services of a third party who has such an entity and can use it to facilitate selling 10 0.4%
5 0.2%
Key marketplace sites in India
0 0
Given these restrictions, unsurprisingly retail ecommerce in India has been dominated by the marketplace model. 2013 2014 2015 2016E 2017F 2018F
The leading marketplaces, and associated approximate percentage of overall Indian ecommerce sales by GMV,
are Amazon.in (15%), Flipkart (44%), Snapdeal (32%) 22. In addition to its main site, Flipkart also operates additional
specialist marketplaces Myntra and Jabong in the fashion category, which may be preferred by brands because they Sales US$ Bn Penetration
are more respectful of the brand itself. At the time of writing, there appear to be questionmarks over the long-term
future of Snapdeal, and it is likely to see its market share reduce. General consensus appears to be that the future
lies in a straight fight: Amazon vs Flipkart + its subsidiaries. Figure 11- ecommerce retail sales and penetration in India26
Recent growth has been strong at over 20% p.a. (considerably ahead of growth most more developed markets),
and there are some spectacular forecasts for future growth – an estimate of a trillion dollars per year by 2030
was published by Amazon for example – but given the history of government intervention to inhibit some of
the drivers which have fuelled spectacular growth in markets such as China, then it is probably wise to take a
prudent view: growth is likely to be attractively solid but unlikely to be miraculous.
19 Amazon 10-K filing, 2015
20 Nishith Desai, Jul 2015 23 Indeed some sources claim that Indian e-commerce failed to grow at all in 2016 e.g. Marketpulse, April 2017
21 Indian Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, March 2016 24 Interview with the author, June 2017
22 Forbes, 2016. These market share figures are fiercely disputed by the marketplaces! 25 Amazon India declined to be interviewed for this paper, but in doing so observed that they didn’t wish to do so because they were
working on announcements for 2018…
26 Sources: eMarketer, Forbes, and Goldman Sachs, 2016
12 13Online retail category split INDIANS AS ONLINE SHOPPERS
Category level data for online retail is somewhat elusive for India, but high level estimates are for the
break-down are shown in (Figure 12):
Size of Prize
Top Online Retail Average cart sizes
Categories in India Average cart sizes for purchases online are generally lower than in western markets, as might be expected,
11% but in key categories such as clothing, not impossibly lower. It is always worth remembering that it is the
wealthiest 6-10% of consumers who represent the online purchasing consumer-base in India (Figure 13):
10% Consumer electronics
34%
Apparel and accessories Average Cart Sizes by Category
Books Books & Media
15%
Beauty and personal care
Toys & Gifts
Other
Personal Care/Beauty
30%
Software
General Merchandise
Clothing & accessories
Figure 12 - high level top online retail category split 27
Consumer electronics
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Summary
US$
• I ndian retail is very fragmented. Over 90% is unorganised, although the Figure 13 - Average Online Cart Size by Category29
organised sector is now growing almost twice as quickly
• Local retailers often do not have very active ecommerce sites Demographics
• T
he ecommerce space is dominated by Marketplaces, especially Flipkart, (and its Of those who use the internet to a significant extent and use it in English – a demographic inherently skewed
fashion-focussed satellites Myntra and Jabong28 ), Amazon and Snapdeal towards the wealthiest and best educated – propensity to purchase by age group is shown in Figure 14.
»» Changing regulations may mean these marketplaces become hungrier for retailers and
brands to participate as sellers Internet users propensity to purchase online by age
»» There are questionmarks over the sustainability of Snapdeal. The future may lie in a
straight battle between Amazon India and Flipkart + subsidiaries 55+
• T
here are extensive – and changing – restrictions imposed by the Indian government
to try to ensure a level playing field for small local unorganised retailers competing 45-54
against potential internet giants. These include
»» Restrictions on foreign ownership of B2C sites 35-44
Age Group
»» Restrictions on the use of promotions and discounts
• R
etail ecommerce in India was estimated to have sale of approximately USD $23bn 25-34
in 2016. The largest categories are consumer electronics and fashion/apparel
• G
rowth is attractively solid (20%+ YoY) but given the existing restrictions and historyAs might be expected in a fairly conservative country, inclination to purchase online is skewed towards those Barriers
demographics which have grown up with the internet. Online purchase propensity drops off significantly in the
silver-surfer segment. Unsurprisingly, top barriers to online purchasing include returns (24%), payment methods (28%), concerns about
security especially of payments (20%), and finding delivery charges off-putting (10%).34 All of these show declines
Online purchase propensity shows little or no variation between genders, but this is in the context of internet over the last three years as Indian shoppers’ comfort with online shopping increases.
usage by men being double that of women.
However they are all factors which are exacerbated by cross-border, and any cross-border proposition targeting
The fashion-oriented marketplace Myntra shared some demographic data for this report: 60%-40% male-female India needs to take very clear steps to address these with potential purchasers.
split, trending rapidly towards a more female audience (with its sister company Jabong already more female), and
with 40% being in the 25-34 age group and a further 20% aged 20-24. 31
General purchase motivations
While not specific to online transactions, it is insightful to examine Indian shoppers’ general motivations for
purchasing, because these are often somewhat different to those in the west, especially the critical importance of
MOTIVATIONS festivals and family events in the purchasing calendar.35
Firstly consumer electronics, which show rather little variation compared with what might be expected in your
home market (Figure 16):
Why do Indians buy online?
Indian shoppers claim, when surveyed, that factors like convenience are a key motivator for shopping online, and
rank price somewhat further down (Figure 15):
Drivers for purchase: consumer electronics
Reasons to shop online
As a gift
Necessity
Marriage event in family
Entertainment
Good deal
Peer Behaviour
Home improvement
Price
Upgrading product
Wide Choice
Ratings & Reviews
Replacement
Easier than mail-order Lifestyle purchase
Convenience 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
Small home appliances Mobiles Computers
Figure 15 - motivations for choosing to shop online32
Home entertainment Large home appliances
In practice this is not necessarily borne out by the operating models of Indian online retailers. Until the recent
changes in the laws to restrict the use of online discounts, the average investment by online retailers in discounts
was a whopping 30% of revenues, with a further 12% spent on marketing and promotions. Unsurprisingly they
traded at an average loss of 35% of turnover, hence the need for Foreign Direct Investment (see above) to sustain
them through their initial growth cash-burn phase.33 Figure 16 - reasons to make a consumer electronics purchase36
Nevertheless, for a brand or retailer considering targeting India with products which are not locally available
locally offline, the emphasis on choice and ratings, plus the demonstrable understanding Indians have that
ecommerce represents an alternative to traditional mail-order, are all encouraging signs.
Anecdotal guidance suggests that Indian consumers will tolerate price mark-ups of around +30-35% in order to
purchase locally (e.g. on marketplaces) compared to the perceived risk of buying from a non-Indian site.
34 S ource: Mastercard, 2015
35 Author’s note: I have once took on a consulting engagement to the (at that time) largest national Indian retailer of jewellery, planning
31 Source: Myntra, June 2017
their ecommerce. It remains the most culturally interesting engagement I have ever done in 11 years of ecommerce consulting, because
32 Source: Mastercard, 2015
almost every purchase was driven by a specific local/religious festival (or events such as a marriage), each with its own very specific
33 Goldman Sachs, India Internet, May 2015
traditions and specific sets articles bought e.g. ‘gold for younger sisters’ etc.
36 BCG, The Tiger Roars, 2012
16 17By contrast, purchases of clothing and accessories, even amongst the wealthy educated professional demographic,
are extraordinarily strongly driven by family events and festivals (Figure 17): HOW TO REACH INDIAN ONLINE SHOPPERS
Motivations for clothing/accessories purchases Channel choice
Marketplace
Replace old clothes
As we saw in section 2, more than 90% of relevant Amazon, meanwhile, remains Amazon. It will be
Sale ecommerce in India takes place on marketplaces, interesting to see if they feel driven towards a more
primarily Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon 38. Moreover, TMall-like model in India, sacrificing some consumer-
Feel like it
as we saw in section 3, recent regulatory changes are ownership and brand-visibility in exchange for sales
New Season likely to make these players hungry for additional growth. Given recent regulatory changes (see the FDI
sellers who will add volume, not to mention credibility, section), this seems a quite likely direction of travel.
Weddings
by selling well-known brands.
Note that all sellers on Indian marketplaces are
Occasion e.g. Birthday Neither Snapdeal nor Flipkart’s main site currently required to have a locally registered Indian entity.
offer any of the brand-image-protecting features You cannot become a marketplace seller without one;
Festivals
that are available on many other marketplaces. Both it may therefore be necessary to seek the services of an
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 remain essentially C2C sites in terms of presentation, appropriately registered partner.40
and the ownership of the relationship to the end-
Poor Urban middle class Top 6% consumer is skewed away from the seller and towards Local site?
the marketplace.
Figure 17 - clothing/accessory purchase motivations37 Unlike for most countries, a local site may well not be
However, Flipkart owns and operates two marketplaces the best option, and may be technically illegal, unless
If you are targeting Indian consumers in all but the most utilitarian of categories, it is essential to build your – Jabong and Myntra – which specifically target you already source a significant proportion of your
trading calendar around events such as festivals, and your marketing messaging around family-centric moments (generally younger and wealthier) fashion consumers. range in India. In practice this tends to restrict to those
such as weddings and birthdays. These are already seeing the potential in offering a more fashion/footwear brands with manufacturing facilities
This is not the place to go into detail about the complexities of the festivals calendar in India; marketeers should brand-conscious, more B2C-like, experience. Brands are in India.
bear in mind that India has multiple religions, and that even within these religions, festivals vary enormously reciprocating by starting to list their products on these
Nike, for example, has a local Indian site.41 Spend a few
by region, especially North India versus South India. In short, do your homework and target very carefully and sites. Major British fashion brands already actively
minutes browsing, and you’ll see that their hearts don’t
tactfully. If you do this well it could have surprisingly high ROI, do it badly and you could easily give offence. selling include New Look, Dorothy Perkins and Next
really seem to be quite in it. Customer service is only
on Myntra, while Missguided are active on Jabong
open 5 days x 8 hours, for example, and shipping times
(Figure 18).
are based on a warehouse only picking Monday-Friday
Other international brands, such as Mango, are already with even the fastest express delivery option requiring
actively using marketplaces as their primary route into a further 2 days.
India, and have seen spectacular growth. International
Summary brand sales on the platform grew 145% between 2016-
17, and are forecast to grow 80% in the next year. 39
• A
verage cart sizes are lower than in the west, but not impossibly lower in key categories This growth is a further contributor to driving the
such as fashion; it’s the wealthiest Indians who are buying online marketplaces to offer further brand-friendly features,
including (in Myntra’s case) international-brand centric
• S
ilver surfers are a less relevant purchasing segment than in more developed areas of the site planned for later this year.
ecommerce countries
• C
hoice and convenience are what Indian shoppers say matters to them; practical
experience suggests that the sense of getting a discount/bargain is much more important
• B
arriers to online purchasing are those that might be expected, and which are
exacerbated by cross-border: delivery charges, confidence in returns, security of
payment, availability of payment methods
• M
otivations for purchase in commodity categories such as consumer electronics are
globally standard; marketing messages need little adjustment
• P
urchase in other categories, such as fashion, accessories or jewellery are very strongly
motivated by family or festival events. The festival calendar in India is complex, varying
by religion and region. Tailor your marketing messages very carefully.
Figure 18 - Missguided using Jabong as a D2C sales channel
37 Ibid. Note that this second survey covers purchases over an extended period, and multiple responses were allowed, hence the data adds
38 Forbes, 2016
up to much more than 100%
39 Sourse: Myntra, June 2017
18 40 Such as the sponsor of this paper WeArePentagon 19
41 http://www.nike.com/in/en_gb/Cross-border Social media usage
Despite these obstacles, Indian consumers in addressable demographics (see section 1) still want to buy
international brands and products online. Given the challenges of getting them from local websites for the simple Snapchat
reason that they often just aren’t listed there, it is unsurprising that Indian online shoppers make extensive use of Tumblr
cross-border purchasing (Figure 19): Pinterest
WeChat
% of internet shoppers who made a cross-border purchase Instagram
LinkedIn
Ireland Twitter
Google+
Canada
Whatsapp
India
Facebook
China 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Netherlands
% of internet users who are active on...
Germany
Figure 20 - main social media activity applications in India
US
The slightly surprising reach of Google+ is partly a legacy of the now defunct Orkut, once the dominant social
UK
media application in India and owned by Google. Unlike most countries, Indian marketeers have been actively
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 investing in developing their Google+ presence45.
Figure 19 - % of consumers who made a cross-border purchase, selected countries42 The other unfamiliar presence is that of the Chinese giant WeChat; loosely speaking WeChat combines every
Not quite at the startling levels of other markets very poorly served by local ecommerce, such as Canada or Ireland, other possible social application you’ve ever used into a single super-convenient application, with better
but still higher than China, the UK or US, for example. Moreover, predicted growth in 2016 of cross-border, based conversion rates for online purchasing. WeChat’s owners are pursuing aggressive expansion in many Asian
on consumer-survey data, was a very healthy 75%.43 countries, and see India as a prime opportunity.46
So for India, cross-border could be a first route to market to its consumers; it may well remain the best option, even This interest from China should act as a broader call-to-action for those considering China as a cross-border target:
at scale. However as the marketplaces continue to develop their B2C propositions to be more brand-friendly, this the Chinese are coming, spearheaded not only by Tencent’s WeChat, but by Alibaba’s Ali-Express.
could be expected to change Those considering using Social Media as their main, or only, online marketing channel in India should beware of
(or possibly exploit!) its extremely skewed demographics (Figure 21). Three-quarters of all active users are aged
under 30, and the majority are male.
Marketing to Indians
Indians may be keen to purchase overseas brands, but you still need to
keep reminding them to do so, and to choose you rather than a competitor. Demographics of Facebook Users in India
So even though a local transactional website may not be happening very
60%
soon, a local online marketing presence is still essential.
50%
Device
% of total active user base
Mobile: 87% of broadband subscriptions are through mobile44, 40%
and non-broadband users don’t really shop online. End of discussion?
Female
Well almost. Many of the remaining 13% are professionals using PCs in 30%
their workplace, and such users are amongst those most likely to make Male
cross-border purchases.
20%
So although your marketing should very definitely be mobile-first,
it hasn’t quite reached the mobile-exclusive stage yet.
10%
Social Media Channels 0%
13-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60+
The profile of social media usage in India is likely to be broadly familiar
(Figure 20). Facebook is up there as the top channel, as you might expect, Age Group
and given the prevalence of English language skills amongst likely target
consumers, your existing presence might well extend with very little effort. Figure 21 - Demographics of Indian Facebook users47
42 Paypal, Global Snapshot, 2015
43 ibid 45 EY, Social Media Marketing, India Trends, 2015
44 Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Oct 2015 46 …to grow their 700M+ active users; Source: Tencent (who own WeChat), 2014
47 WeAreSocial, Aug 2015
20 21Indians, and especially the younger fashion conscious consumers most likely to purchase online, are also highly Google India itself offers search in nine vernacular languages in addition to English (Figure 23): Hindi, Bengali,
responsive to influencer marketing48 , and the marketplaces in particular invest actively in this space. Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Telugu, Punjabi and Tamil, i.e. approximately 85% coverage and including
all major urban areas.
Other digital marketing channels: email and SMS
Indian companies themselves don’t see social as their most important channel (Figure 22). Remember that you
most likely won’t have a transactional website: however you probably still need a website presence, and so that
channel in fact ranks as top priority.
Preferred e-Marketing Channels in India
Others
Video
SMS
SEM
Figure 23 - Google India in vernacular languages
Social
Email
Website
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Summary
% of survey respondents who used...
• There is a difficult channel choice to make when targeting Indians via ecommerce.
»» The dominant online marketplaces offer weak control of brand combined with strong
Figure 22 - preferred digital marketing channels in India49 disintermediation between seller and buyer; a less than ideal pairing. However recent
Go back a few years, and SMS would almost certainly have been the next option.50 Stricter regulation, combined regulatory changes may lead to them developing features more sympathetic to brands
with evasive action taken by mobile users, has resulted in a return to email as the next preferred channel. A rather »» Setting up an own website on an Indian domain is subject to difficult, and possibly
startling 29% of retailers send daily emails, according to one survey51. Unsurprisingly rising use of spam filters, prohibitive, regulations
generally rather fluid personal email addresses, and lack of consumer consent are growing issues.
»» Cross-border may be a good option in the short term, but the as the marketplaces
increase in sophistication, they may prove a more sustainable long term bet
Search and Content • C
ross-border ecommerce has been used by 36% of Indians who buy online. It was
forecast to grow 75% in 2016
The search engine situation in India is extremely simple: Google has a 96% market share. Your content should
primarily be in English; none of the top Indian ecommerce sites has a non-English option. • Marketing should be mobile first; 87% of relevant internet access is via mobile
There is a growing trend towards offering vernacular content (45% of content in 2013, forecast to rise to 60% by • T
he social media landscape is generally familiar: Facebook tops the charts for
201852), but there are 22 officially recognised languages. In practice, generating content in Hindi (with 422 million example
speakers) and possibly Marathi (another 73 million, and the language of the commercial capital Mumbai)53, might »» Demographics of usage are biased towards the young, and very strongly skewed
be an interesting possibility if you really want to aggressively target Indian customers. The challenge is that towards males
they will almost certainly still need to complete any online transaction in English. However given the particular
demographics of Indian internet usage and also education, if you are targeting certain customer-segments »» The Chinese giant WeChat is making successful inroads into India, backed by aggressive
especially women, you might contemplate vernacular marketing with the expectation that the final purchase will marketing. It may be an interesting horse to back for the medium-term
be made by someone else with English language competence. • Search is totally dominated by Google: they have an 96% share of the market
48 The author can attest to personal experience of the demi-god status apparently enjoyed by Bollywood stars and cricketers, memorably • G
oogle is driving efforts to make vernacular content accessible: they offer 9
including a wet-shave abandoned midway through by a barber more anxious to get a glimpse of his hero than receive his fee languages in addition to English, covering around 85% of the population and all
49 Octane Research: The State of eMarketing in India, Nov 2015 major urban areas of interest to retailers
50 Author’s note: during onsite consulting engagements in India in 2010 and 2011 my clients’ mobiles appeared
to be rendered almost unusable by a never-ending stream of marketing-SMS messages »» Around 45% of Indian internet content was published in vernacular languages in 2013,
51 Octane Research: The State of eMarketing in India, Nov 2015 forecast to rise to 60% by 2018
52 BCG, India@Digital.Bharat, Jan 2015
53 Census of India, 2011
»» Investing in content in Hindi and Marathi might be a plausible starting point
22 23PRACTICALITIES: LEGAL, PAYMENT, LOGISTICS Payment
Given that it is rather unlikely that you will be creating a specifically Indian version of your website, than the
complexities of local payment infrastructure are less relevant than in most markets. However, making an existing
Legal issues website intended for cross-border purchases by Indians more sympathetic to their preferred payment methods will
certainly drive sales.
Introduction Spam Data on preferred payment methods stated by different sources are exceptionally contradictory, probably due to
the fairly rapid pace of change. The general thrust of the data is that cash-on-delivery is the preferred method,
The general consensus of the ecommerce community in There is presently no formal e-mail anti-spam
followed by card, with rapid growth in mobile payments (Figure 24):
India about the current state laws impacting ecommerce legislation, although it is a topic currently under active
is that they are rather fragmented, and in some places discussion. The very strict Canadian system appears to
terribly outdated (especially in the area of consumer be a likely preferred template. Online Payment Methods in India
protection). The following summarises key areas that SMS (and nuisance call) spam, which had reached 1%
are likely to affect retailers/brands contemplating India plague levels, has resulted in a nationwide, regulated57
as a cross-border destination. system of opt-out, generally known as DND – do not
General advice would be to watch this space. There is disturb.58 Its relative effectiveness, compared to many 12%
broad agreement that updating is needed, and some other countries, is reflected in the switch of preferred
update is in flight. In practice, however, such updates e-marketing channel from SMS back to email.59
are likely to be modelled on legislation already in place 12% eWallets
in other countries, and are unlikely to be onerous if you
are already compliant at home.
Distance selling, consumer protection
Online Bank
and returns
Debit Card
India has existing laws covering consumer protection.
Data protection, cookies, storing They are generally considered outdated (they were Credit Card
information promulgated in 1986 and the most recent update was in 59%
16%
COD
India has a formal Data Protection Act in place, 2002), and an updated framework is making its (slow)
although it was only fully established in respect of I.T. way towards becoming law.
systems in 201154. It covers what you would expect: if Although the law is outdated and evolving, a current
you (as a typical retailer/brand) are already compliant basic working assumption should be that the consumer
in your home country, you are probably compliant has a 7-day cooling off period during which no-fault
with Indian requirements. (As a general indication of returns are possible. Figure 24 - distribution of online payment methods in India60
the relative immaturity of the legal framework around
ecommerce in India, the EU doesn’t accept that the And, apart from totally standard provisions about not
Indian code is sufficiently strong.) Opt-in/opt-out is misrepresenting your goods and services – if you are
compliant at home, you’ll definitely be compliant in Cards
required when storing personal data. The law is less
strict than in many countries. It does, however, restrict India – well, that’s about it. Credit card penetration is low, with only around 20M in circulation. Debit card penetration is much higher and
sharing this data with 3rd parties, so you cannot, for Local practice is increasingly to make returns easy for growing quite quickly, by 9% in 2014 to reach 431M issued61, and these are often co-branded for Visa or Mastercard.
example, collect email addresses and then share them the consumer, but there’s no legal need to do so. In practice, such cards may not be fully enabled for cross-border purchases.
without explicit consent at the time of collection.55
There is no formal cookie law.56
Cash on delivery
Although extremely unfamiliar if you are operating ecommerce in most western countries, cash on delivery is
Disclaimer still the preferred payment method in many places, and India is one such.
This document is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, investment or other professional advice on Because it is so standard, it is typically offered by the larger parcel-delivery companies as a value-added service.
any individual matter. Whereas every effort has been made to ensure that the information given in this document is accurate, IMRG accepts It isn’t cheap: in India it generally costs around 2-4% in merchant fees to the handling parcel-carrier. Moreover
no liability for any errors, omissions or misleading statements, and no warranty is given or responsibility accepted as to the standing of any
individual, firm, company or other organisation mentioned. Publication as well as commercial and non-commercial transmission to a third
there is still the considerable risk of expensively sending the goods, only for the buyer to decline to pay “on
party is prohibited unless prior permission is obtained from IMRG. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views the doorstep”.
of IMRG.
Nevertheless if you decide to ship cross-border, it is worth exploring if your parcels partner can support this
option, and evaluating the associated costs and risks. Note that shipments of goods worth more than USD $2000
which are not paid for via a controlled payment gateway (i.e. are paid in cash) is not permitted.62
54 Section 43A of the IT Act titled “Reasonable practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information Rules, 2011
55 Indian Centre for Internet & Society
56 ibid
57 By the Telecoms Regulator, TRAI
58 Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference (Thirteenth Amendment) Regulations, 2013
60 The Paypers, Online Payment Methods in 2016
59 Octane Research: The State of eMarketing in India, Nov 2015
61 Goldman Sachs, India Internet, 2015
62 Reserve Bank of India, 2015
24 25Wallets and Mobile Payents In practice, you therefore have three (or four) main options.
A Unified Payment Interface (UPI) system for making mobile payments online has been developed by 29 Indian 1. Use a point-to-point shipper with an Indian presence, such as DHL or Fedex, which is expensive but reliable;
banks, and was launched in August 2016. It is expected to prove extremely popular, and also to render other it may not cover the whole of India, but in practice will probably cover 98% of likely sales. You may need to
eWallet solutions (such as Paypal) rather irrelevant in India.63 modify your checkout to validate PIN-code coverage. Expensive but reliable.
At the time of writing, take-up data was not available, but offering compatibility with it is certainly likely to be 2. Use a specialist parcel forwarder with a partnership with a local Indian delivery company, such as wnDirect,
worth exploring, and will strongly signal to prospective Indian consumers your interest in selling to them. P2P logistics, or Spring. Mid-price, mid-service.
3. Rely on accessing India Post, usually by using your local national postal service e.g. Royal Mail as local the
access point. Lowest price. Unfortunately also accompanied by far the highest chance of the parcel getting lost.
Pricing Again statistics are difficult to come by, but anecdotes are not. If your items are of high value, probably not the
best choice.
Informal guidance from the big marketplaces suggests that Indian shoppers generally expect to pay a little more
to access western brands than these brands would sell for in their home markets. A premium of up to 35% is 4. Don’t ship to India, but still target Indian customers and hope they’ll manage to get the stuff there by themselves.
considered tolerable; this is not inconsistent with likely additional shipping and customs/duty costs. The alternative, particularly if you are using marketplace channels, is of course to ship in bulk to India, and have a
local partner organise the delivery. A local partner will be mandatory if you are at any useful scale: more rules on
foreign ownership apply here, most especially a requirement to partner (or have) a local legal entity.
LOGISTICS Offering free returns from India back to your home country is prohibitively expensive. Even Asos, normally major
enthusiasts of free or subsidised fully-managed returns don’t attempt them from India, instead directing the
customer to their nearest India Post Office64.
Shipping
Getting your goods to your prospective Indian customer is something of a challenge. In practice this is also Using the marketplaces
the attitude taken by many Indian customers themselves. Although accurate data is, for obvious reasons, Both Flipkart - plus its subsidiaries Jabong and Myntra – and Snapdeal aim to own the relationship with
rather difficult to come by, it is believed that around 25% of Indian ecommerce sales are in practice shipped to the end-consumer. Obviously there’s a possible downside to this: disintermediation from your customers.
addresses outside India (to friends or relatives) and then “informally imported”. This hidden potential in India However there is a much larger corresponding upside: owning the relationship with the end consumer
consumers may make targeting them more attractive than is initially apparent. means they also take ownership of last-mile delivery… and returns.
There are 25,000 postal code regions (known as PIN codes) in India. Only India Post covers most of them Flipkart/Jabong/Myntra especially offers a variety of models for getting your goods to the final purchaser,
(Figure 25). In practice this is less of a restriction than might at first appear, because most prospective customers including:
will live in the major cities.
• Fully “stocked” model in India
• Consignment model, where you ship wholesale to India to their warehouse(s)
PARCEL DELIVERY PIN-CODE COVERAGE PIN-CODE COVERAGE • Parcel-by-parcel model managed by a third-party specialising in purchasing at wholesale prices in the UK,
OFFER
COMPANY (standard pre-paid) (with cash on delivery) and selling on the marketplaces in India on your behalf65
India Post Standard parcel (4-8 days 25000 i.e. all 25000 There are pros and cons to each, but in general, having someone else shepherd your items through importation,
after customs customs, and last mile is worth serious consideration.
clearance)
India Post Express parcel (2-4 days 50 top cities Same 50 top cities Taxes & Duties
after customs clearance)
Blue Dart (a subsidiary of Fully managed parcel 3300 4100 There is no De Minimis for shipping into India, so customs duties will apply. There’s a lot of variation in rates, from
DHL) delivery 0% to 150%, although in practice the overall results tends to be somewhere between 20% and 30% for most likely
categories of interest for cross-border ecommerce. Their structure is complex, and includes various additional
DTDC ecommerce specialist 7100 8000
levies, such as the disturbingly named CEX and CESS. Calculations are not straightforward.
Fedex Fully managed parcel 2650 5550
delivery The Indian central board of excise and customs provides a website which allows you to calculate duties and tariffs,
although be warned that it’s fairly maddening to use66: www.icegate.gov.in/Webappl . You will need the standard
HS code for the product (which this website refers to as CTH, India’s flavour of HS, although for most purposes
Figure 25 - local parcel-carrier options in India they are identical).
In practice, excluding VAT (e.g. British VAT at 20%) and then applying local taxes and duties, will tend to make your
items about 10-15% more expensive overall than they are to domestic customers. A few relevant examples follow67
(Figure 26)
64 See Asos.com India delivery and returns policies
65 Such as that offered by sponsor WeArePentagon, branded Arcade
66 Hint: amongst various UI challenges, the following is probably the key one: on the initial menu,
don’t enter the full 8 digit HS code; instead you need to enter the first 4 or 6 digits, get directed to
63 The Paypers, Online Payment Methods in 2016
another screen which presents a list of 8 digit codes, and click-thru on the applicable code from there.
67 Using the icegate.gov.in calculator. Figures have been rounded to 1 decimal point; the official calculations
26 generate strangely precise numbers such as 24.491% 27APPLICABLE CUSTOMS + DUTIES
(as a % of ex-VAT sale price)
Cotton shirt 24.5%
Leather-free trainers 29.4%
Silver jewellery 35.5%
Ladies Jeans 29.4%
Laptop 17.4%
Figure 26 - Examples Customs + Duties for goods outbound from UK into India
Offering DDP (delivery and duty-paid in advance) shipping on your website is strongly recommended for India,
unless you want your parcels to become enmeshed in Indian bureaucracy not famed for its speed.
Summary
• T
he legal framework covering ecommerce in India is rather weak. Broadly speaking,
if you are compliant at home, you are compliant in India
• T
he exception is controls on SMS marketing, where India has a relatively effective system
which has led marketers to prefer email as a communication channel
• 7-day cooling off is required, but otherwise consumer protection in areas around returns is weak
• There is no cookie law
• Cash on delivery remains the preferred method of payment
• C
redit card penetration is very low, even amongst your likely affluent target customers. ABOUT PENTAGON
Debit card penetration is higher, although its usability for cross-border transactions is variable
• M
obile payment are predicted to gain rapid traction in India, given the unified UPI scheme
recently rolled out by India’s top 29 banks. It may be worth exploring how you could offer this Pentagon is an end-to-end solution Why Pentagon?
provider that enables brands and retailers
• Logistics is a major barrier to Indian ecommerce. • Unlike competitors, our success-based commercial
to accelerate their online growth through model aligns our business completely with our
»» Many Indian customers work around this by having parcels delivered by websites to overseas
60+ global marketplaces worldwide. customers’ objectives.
addresses of friends or relatives
»» Returns to home-country are likely to be prohibitively expensive, and few are attempting it Using a team of more than 150 ecommerce experts in • Our technology is a purpose built online marketplace
seven countries worldwide, we optimise and localise integrator, with the ability to open up more
• F
lipkark, Jabong, Myntra and Snapdeal all insist on taking care of last-mile delivery themselves; it may marketplaces across the globe than any other software
data, integrate to new ecommerce platforms, connect
well be worth taking advantage of this, shipping wholesale to their warehouses, or going further and provider.
stock management and order managements systems to
working with them to collect from you in the UK
marketplaces, launch and manage online stores, drive • We combine people plus technology to provide a
• F
edex and DHL have extensive coverage of India for premium parcel shipping; DHL has a controlling ecommerce sales, handle international logistics and fully managed, completely end-to-end retail solution
stake in local player Blue Dart returns, and provide multi-lingual customer service in across multiple online marketplaces globally.
more than a dozen languages.
• S
olutions relying primarily on India Post enjoy a rather variable reputation, • Our wholesale solution takes away the complexities
especially for higher value goods Our tiered service offering provides retailers with a of international ecommerce, as we sell your products
tailored solution to meet their unique requirements; for you on one of our global marketplace stores.
• Semi-managed solutions offer a good balance between value and reliability for shipping into India.
from a robust technical integration to just one
• DDP (delivery and duty paid) shipping is strongly recommended into India marketplace right through to fully managed online • We work with a wide range of customers from across
stores across multiple international platforms. the retail spectrum, focusing specifically on large
• C
ustoms duties levels are generally high enough to ensure your products will be 10-15% more expensive in brands and retailers. We are trusted by Next, Dyson,
India than at home (once sales taxes are taken into account), but are not impossibly prohibitive Get in touch to discover how we can accelerate your Ann Summers, BMW, Halfords, Maplin, Lloyds
global online growth. #RetailWithoutBorders Pharmacy, Euro Car Parts, Sports Direct, Co-op,
Phillips Lighting, Pretty Little Thing and Suzuki.
• Our vision is to deliver ‘retail without borders’ -
wearepentagon.com | @wearepentagon enabling retailers in any part of the world to sell to
hello@wearepentagon.com | +44 (0) 8940 5392 customers across the globe.
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