History of E-commerce and online shopping in India

The internet totally changes our life style. And also changes the style of shopping or we can say with the internet the online shopping becoming an integral part of our life.

Online shopping developed with B2B (Business to Business) as well as with B2C (Business to consumers) since everybody is on internet, and development is going on each and every second for grabbing a better share of the market.

Evolution of Online Shopping

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) permits companies to carry out electronic transactions. Although the concept of e-Commerce did not touch the daily Internet user till the era of 1990s yet some big players had started to use EDI as early as 1960. The railroad industry was among the first to understand the importance of EDI and start using the same. Other players in the transportation industry followed.

But in 1979 there is a hero of E-commerce and his name is Michael Aldrich. It was the year 1979 when Aldrich was on a stroll in a supermarket with his wife. Suddenly, he was hit by an idea which changed it all for e-Commerce. Aldrich connected a domestic TV and a computer with telephone lines so as to start selling groceries online via this model. How they were able to tackle various situations is a different story altogether, but at the end of the day they did come up with a model that helped them launch the business of online shopping.

Videotext was being researched since much earlier for supplying the end users with textual information. Much work was done in UK on videotext, it was a two way message service and developed basically for information sending where “many companies” were interested in, but on the backdrop of all that Michael Aldrich in 1979 gave the “concept of teleshopping” (today online shopping) which revolutionized the way businesses happen. And same happened in US around that year with services like the Source and CompuServe.

Also, it was April 1984 when CompuServe announced Electronic Mall which was almost like the e-Commerce of today.

In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee wrote the World Wide Web (www) and gave the first browser to view the web which changed most of things, a whole new revolution started, which till date is ON.

In 1992, Revolutionary book by J.H. Snider and Terra Ziporyn namely ‘Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and What We Buy’ from St. Martin’s Press.

In 1994, Netscape released Navigator browser, later introduced Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption for secure transaction. Pizza Hut started online ordering on their webpage, the first ever online shopping site which was launched on World Wide Web. And then cars, bikes and other content as well started selling on the internet.

Amazon.com started selling each and everything online, and along with that Jeff Bezos starts first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations. Then Radio HK and NetRadio start broadcasting. Companies like Dell and Cisco started using internet in all their transactions. Online auction started by eBay.

Although Amazon and eBay are considered to be the initial online retail stores.

The year 1995 can be considered as watershed for online shopping. Amazon and eBay are the two most successful shopping websites, which were launched in that year and went on to change people’s perceptions about the viability of retail e-commerce.

NSFNET was the backbone of the Internet, but it wasn’t available for commercial use. It was the year 1991 when the NSF (National Science Foundation) cleared the way for the commercial use of NET. This was considered to be a major boost for the e-Commerce industry and its future growth.

It was the year 1995 when NSF started charging a fee for registering domain names. At that time the Internet had 12,000 domain names registered and the number jumped to over 2 Million in the next 3 years.

Statistics state that the traffic on the backbone network of NSF jumped to over 1 trillion bytes per month in the year 1991 itself after it was opened for commercial use. By 1996 there were over 10 million hosts online and the Internet was now a global phenomenon.

Online Shopping Evolution in India

In 2002: IRCTC teaches India to Book ticket online

India first came into interaction with the online E-Commerce via the IRCTC. The government of India experimented this online strategy to make it convenient for its public to book the train tickets. Hence, the government came forward with the IRCTC Online Passenger Reservation System, which for the first time encountered the online ticket booking from anywhere at any time The advancements in the technology as the years passed on have been also seen in the IRCTC Online system as now one can book tickets (immediately, normal, etc.) on one go, easy payments, can check the status of the ticket and availability of the train as well. This is a big achievement in the history of India in the field of online E-Commerce.

In 2003: Introduction of Low Cost Airline with AirDeccan

After the unpredicted success of the IRCTC, the online ticket booking system was followed by the airlines (like AirDeccan, Indian Airlines, Spicejet, etc.). Airline agency encouraged, web booking to save the commission given to agents and thus in a way made a major population of the country to try E-Commerce for the first time. Today, the booking system is not just limited to the transportation rather hotel bookings, bus booking etc. are being done using the websites like Makemytrip and Yatra.

In 2007: The Deep Discounted model of Flipkart

The acceptance of the ecommerce on a large scale by the Indian people influenced other business players also to try this technique for their E-businesses and gain high profits. Though online shopping has been present since the 2000 but it gained popularity only with deep discount model of Flipkart. In a way it re-launched online shopping in India.  Soon other portals like Amazon, Flipkart, Jabong, snapdeal etc. started hunting India for their businesses.

Today, the online shopping has become a trend in India and the reason behind the adoption of this technique lies in the attractive online websites, user friendly interface, bulky online stores with new fashion, easy payment methods (i.e. secure pay online via gateways like paypal or cash-on-delivery), no bound on quantity & quality, one can choose the items based on size, color, price, etc.