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According to a WPP’s GroupM and Wunderman Thompson report with Amazon Ads, India is set to see 350 Mn ecommerce users in 2025.

This is almost a 2.5X increase from the 150 Mn ‘digital consumers’ in India in 2020, per the report. The report noted that India’s ecommerce users will grow at 23% CAGR to reach 500 Mn by 2030.

In terms of market penetration, the GroupM report noted that by 2025, 33% of all internet users in India would have shopped online. The report predicted that by 2030, that ratio would double to 46%. The same figure was at around 25% in 2020.

At the same time, around 70% of internet users in India would have completed an online transaction in 2025, with the same number rising to 75% by 2030. The figure stood at 46% in 2020.

GroupM’s report also added that around 80% of the urban internet users in India use ecommerce portals for online product research. Further, around a quarter of them visit ecommerce websites for product research even for their offline purchases. Therefore, ecommerce is playing an ever bigger role in customer journeys on the internet.

Further, the report noted that the new online customers are relying more on voice and vernacular searches on ecommerce websites, as the two have grown 255% and 136% during 2021, respectively.

Ecommerce Startups Bagged $27 Bn Funding Between 2014 & 2021

This comes as India’s ecommerce market opportunity is set to rise to $400 Bn by 2030, per an Inc42 report. With 24 unicorns and nine soonicorns among 5,127 active startups, the ecommerce segment in India is a lucrative opportunity. Indian ecommerce startups have raised more than $27 Bn funding between 2014 and 2021.

As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) data, India had more than 788 Mn internet users as of March 31, 2022.

That translates to around 60% of India’s population having internet access. An increasing internet penetration has resulted in segments such as consumer internet and ecommerce to expand rapidly within the country. The total market opportunity represented by both the segments by 2025 is around $1.8 Tn, per Inc42 data.

India’s consumer internet market is one of the biggest segments within the startup ecosystem, having produced 57 unicorns so far. Consumer internet startups have raised more than $80 Bn in funding between 2014 and 2021.

Given that India’s startup ecosystem in total has raised around $130 Bn since then, that means almost 62% of all startup funding has gone to consumer internet startups.